


The Mouth of the Devil

by EtcheStone



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Betrayal, Blind Jack, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jack doesn't know Reaper is Gabe, M/M, Mild canon divergence, Past Relationship(s), Post-Fall of Overwatch, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, Torture, sort of, there's gonna be a lot of torture yall
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-18 13:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtcheStone/pseuds/EtcheStone
Summary: The infamous Soldier: 76 has been captured by Talon and is being held prisoner while they try to beat information out of him. He can't imagine putting those he formerly considered family in danger, and he's set on keeping his mouth shut or dying trying to, but the one interrogating him seemingly knows all the ways to get under his skin.Gabriel has been dead for almost a decade. He wants nothing more than to exact revenge upon those who deserve it, those who made him into what he is now. The perfect opportunity comes right into his lap and he can't remember the last time he was this excited to dig his claws into a prisoner. But why is he so scared of Jack figuring out who he is?





	1. Chapter 1

In his old age, Jack doesn’t bounce back quite like he used to.

His first startled inhale upon regaining consciousness is wet and brings the salty tang of iron. The wet makes him notice how aching dry his mouth is, and the taste causes him so much surprise that his head snaps up, bringing his shoulders with it. He instantly regrets the motion, which brings a sharp, throbbing pang of pain hammering into his temples. With a groan, he shuts his eyes and runs his tongue along the inside of his teeth, tasting more of that bitter flavor. Frowning, he tries to wet his parched lips and eyes the puddle of blood that his head was previously resting in. The stuff is thick and half-congealed. Revolting.

Glancing about, he tries to take an inventory of his injuries, his environment, and any advantage he may have been left with. He is without his pulse rifle, which is unsurprising, but his captors have taken his biotic grenades as well, and the pistol he normally keep on his hip. They’ve taken the holster for that too, and his harness. He has nothing but his clothes, but even some of that is missing. The faceplate of his mask is missing, the slot that hides his mouth and his nose and ventilates his air. He has the vague memory of tearing it off himself after it had been crushed inwards, but he still has his visor. 

His hands are bound behind him, arms hooked behind the chair he’s in, and he can feel that the cuffs are made of the stern stuff; weighty, with no flimsy little chain in between. His ankles bound as well, but with the standard. They definitely don’t want his hands free, but apparently it doesn’t matter if he manages to get his legs free. 

He can’t feel any serious injury with just his miniscule shifting. There are bruises and tears in his clothes where cuts knick his skin, and there is a deep, whole-body ache that’s rooted deep in his muscles. The pain is sharper in his head, as if it flows to the rest of him from there. The work of dehydration and blood loss, and the head injuries he’s sustained.

It only makes sense that he’s in such a state. He wasn’t going to get a nice sit down and a cup of bad coffee after he’d dropped half of the guys who’d rushed him. 

God, he was stupid. 

Which wasn’t a new revelation, not at all, he was just being reminded of it for the upteenth time.

He thought he’d been so smart, stealing that piece of intel from Talon about weapon transfers happening at the docks. Thought he’d just waltz in and ruin the whole show like he was just made out of luck. Fine lot of victory he had with  _ that _ idea.

They’d fed it to him. He realizes that now, after the fact, when he’s tied up and captive. They let it slip on purpose, and he thought he’d been so clever, outsmarting them, breaking their system. It makes him grind his teeth to think about what Ana would say to him about his growing reckless streak.

He should have known better.

He got what he deserved for his rashness, at least. A set of reinforced cuffs, enough non-lethal rounds to take down a squadron cranked into him, and a tranq that still had him fighting off fog what had to be several hours later, judging from the span of the blood on the table.

They had wanted him good, and now they have him.

The fluorescent lights overhead bear into him like a drill, only making the headache worse and harder to collect himself. Thankfully, there’s not much in the room to take in. Excruciatingly bland, white walls and one-way windows, cement floors that are pale in color and he’s sure have never quite been clean of blood, and the swiveling cyclops eyes of at least three cameras. A thick looking door with no handle, no bars, nothing but the seams that carve it out of the wall and what looks to be a metal flap at the bottom. Presumably for sliding him food.

It’s like something out of a horror movie, honestly. Reminiscent of a laboratory, or a medical room. It makes his skin crawl.

At least he knows they’re watching him, and quite closely. They don’t want him escaping or having any tools to help him do such a thing. He’s not sure how many men are between him and the outside, but he’s pretty sure it’s somewhere around a  _ hell of a lot _ . He wonders how many guards are outside that door, or if there is anyone there at all, to signify just how confident they are in their prison.

He stretches himself upwards as best as he can manage, flexing the muscles in his sore shoulders and trying to listen through the white noise machine and the ringing in his ears for voices, for footsteps, for anything. It’s so hard to concentrate on anything past the headache brought on by his beating and dehydration, hard to focus over the prickling sensation of numb nerves waking back up, but there’s nothing.

Jack glances to the window and sees nothing but the foggy, darker outline of himself. There’s no dim silhouette of a figure on the other side, no indication of to who is watching him. He shifts the positioning of his legs and braces his feet against the floor, pushing his weight backwards. The chair does not move. He lifts his legs, knocking knees against the underside of the small metal table, but it too does not move. Bolted into place to keep him from lifting it and doing harm. If he had the strength to break either, he might have put his hand to trying, but he doubts he has the energy just to stand. The battered muscles in his legs ache just from moving that little. 

Resigning himself to the waiting game, Jack tries to shift himself into a more comfortable position on the chair, sinking lower and stretching his aching legs. There’s nothing he can do about his arms, for now, but he knows they’ll be sore later from being kept behind him the way they are. He keeps his head up, though, refuses to let it lean backwards or dip forwards. The crick in his neck wouldn’t be worth it, nor would the appearance of tiring. 

It seems like almost an hour before the door opens. It could have been just a few moments, but Jack is so drained and his body is so exhausted still that he can’t tell. There’s a heavy sound, a chunking of heavy metal sliding out of place, and then a scraping, grating noise as the heavy door is pushed inwards. Jack’s head, which had begun to droop traitorously, jerks upright as he tries to focus in on the figure drifting in through the doorway the moment that there is room enough.

A familiar figure draped in a long, sweeping coat, covered in scuffed leather. Jack’s grown so used to seeing the Reaper wielding those enormous shotguns of his, but now all he has is his talons, glinting in the harsh light. The Reaper pauses, head swiveling towards his bound prisoner to stare as he waits for the door to grind back closed behind him. Jack stretches his neck up in a way that’s hopefully not too obvious or desperate looking as he strains to see past the broad figure of the Reaper into wherever the door door leads from. He has no such luck, and doesn’t manage to see anything before it closes and locks back into place with the same heavy clunking sound.

The Reaper remains for a moment, staring, watching Jack stare back. His appearance seems so melodramatic in the bland, clinical room that Jack can’t help the small smile that pulls at his lips. He wonders, just for a moment, if Reaper isn’t one man like he’d had so many run ins with but rather a costume that that trot out every so often to play up the myth and the fear. 

Their own focus-grouped bogeyman. Not that he really knows who the ‘they’ would be. Talon? Whoever it is that takes turns wearing that mask?

The pregnant pause ends when Reaper snorts, shakes his head in what can only be disgust. And Jack’s wondering goes away entirely, because that voice is unmistakable. Even if he’s only ever heard it over crackling security camera footage and in the occasional snarls and quips exchanged between them on whatever ground they battle on, he is certain that it is one man and one man alone. 

“For someone who has been making so much trouble for us, you don’t look like much else besides a beaten old hound,” The Reaper rasps in that deep, harsh voice. There’s a grinding sort of reverb to it, and a heavy dose of derision. Somehow it’s a little more off-putting to hear it when Jack is restrained and weak instead of meeting the Reaper on equal ground.

The man comes closer, cloak rippling through the still air in his wake and footsteps making far too little sound for boots as heavy as those. Jack tries to tip himself back as the Reaper approaches, only remembering that he cannot when the chair doesn’t give.

“The famous Jack Morrison,” The Reaper continues, incredibly obvious in his taunting in a way that makes Jack grind his teeth even though he has heard something along those lines before, while they had both been unrestrained and on a rooftop. “Not so heroic now, are you?”

Jack tilts his head to the side, rubs a bit of dried blood off onto the shoulder of his jacket, breathes out a sound a little too hollow to be a laugh. He grins, feeling and thinking that he has nothing left to lose but his life.

“Yeah, well. The makeover your boys gave me earlier isn’t exactly doing me any favors,” He says. The Reaper snorts again, the only sign to show that he’d heard and acknowledged, and comes to a halt on the other side of the table. Then he carries on without responding.

“I’m sure you can guess why you’re still alive, can’t you?”

He can’t. Jack can think of nothing past being a punching bag for the thing in front of him. He knows there is more. He knows there are more options, but he can’t reach them, can’t claw them up from his sluggish thoughts. Everything is trying its hardest to wake up, to ramp back up to normal speed, but the dehydration is crippling. 

“Pretty sure it’s not just because you’ve always wanted an autograph,” He manages, wetting his lips in an anxious tic. He manages to maintain eye contact- well, as much as he can imagine to with the both of them wearing masks- and stares into the unnervingly empty eyeholes of the Reaper’s mask. He breathes in deep. 

Bluff. Just keep talking. Don’t show weakness, or else he’ll pounce. He’s done it before. This man does not hesitate, does not show mercy or pity. Don’t let him see that you’re still functioning at such a slow rate.

“You know it’s not too late to save yourself a lot of wasted time and a lot of cleanup. You could just kill me now,” Jack exhales like he’s just taken a hard lap and watches the Reaper closely, trying to read anything beyond the  _ menace  _ in his posture. He knows the Reaper won’t take the deal, won’t kill him, he’s just trying to keep talking. Silence would be a weakness.

Jack’s not sure that he believes all the stir about eating souls, but he has seen the guy move so fast that it’s inhuman. In a fair fight he thinks- he  _ knows _ that he’d stand a decent chance. Near every meeting he’s had with the Reaper on the battlefield, neither of them have won or lost. They’re always neck and neck, neither of them able to get the upper hand for more than a minute at best. But like this, shackled and lightheaded with bloodloss, without his visor or his rifle, he’s actually starting to wonder if the best choice really would be to die fast and quiet. 

“Believe me, Morrison, I would very much like to kill you,” The Reaper growls, smoke wreathing out from beneath his mask, puffing with every heavy exhale and permeating the air with decay. Jack wrinkles his nose behind his mask and tries to figure out how the guy does that. Tries to figure out anything, really, past that flat monotone that he’s never heard express any emotion but anger. “But that would be awfully wasteful of me, especially after we just got our hands on you. You’re quite the prize. One that’s worth all that hard work.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t think too highly of your stubbornness. You have no idea how many people have played that line to me,” The wraith’s voice tilts, raising an octave in mockery as he tilts his head back and lays a clawed hand dramatically over his chest. “‘Oh, you’ll never break me, I would never betray the trust put in me. I could  _ never _ put others in danger’.”

Jack feels nothing but disgust as he listens. It’s like the Reaper lives only to mock, to scorn the countless others that he’s broken. Those that were brave and meant well, just to be faced with the hardest test of their will. The Reaper seems to take some sort of malicious glee in his work, but that could be an act. Something to make it feel pointless to hold out or appeal to the man’s better judgement- if it even existed- because he enjoyed doling out the pain. 

“And then they break at the first broken finger,” The Reaper hisses, dropping his hand and leaning in, annoyance in that deep tone. “It’s always so disappointing. I hope you’re stronger than that. I love the strong ones. The ones that take a harsher hand to make them bend.”

There’s another pause, a moment in which their eyes might have met if they were both not hiding behind masks. There’s something unfair about it, how the Reaper knows who Jack is even though they have never been around each other unmasked, and Jack hasn’t the slightest clue what the identity of the other is. 

The hand snaps out, fast as a striking viper, to seize Jack by the neck. His lips peel beck into a snarl as the Reaper’s hand closes around his throat, unhesitating and unyielding, unpredicted even though he should have known. Talons score his skin, shredding easily through the skin tight shirt beneath his jacket.

It clicks in his head then, as he feels the cold metal press against his skin. It’s information that Talon wants.

“You won’t disappoint me, will you?”

Hot, bright pricks of pain burn in his lungs as he tries to pull in a breath that won’t come. If he squirms, those claws will only dig in deeper and draw blood. All he can do is take it, staring straight through his visor into the hollow eyes of the Reaper’s mask.

He starts to get the feeling that this game that the Reaper is introducing to him won’t stop until he was dead, or empty of what they want from him. 

The former, hopefully, if it had to be one of the two. Beyond the years of research in the start of Overwatch, its financiers and their agendas, he’d been in contact with Captain Amari. The woman had been declared K.I.A. years ago, and no one but he know she was still alive. He knew her location, and had been slipping her as many tips as he could manage to help keep her hidden. 

He would rather die than live a day knowing he’d compromised her safety in return for his own.

Amari had always been honest with him, stayed impartial and kind even during his most bitter fights with- Gabriel. It had meant so much to Jack, to have someone who was willing to listen to his side. She never hesitated to tell him when he was wrong, but she always understood where he had come from. There were so few people that he could have been anything less than composed in front of. 

He’d loved her, in a way. Loves her still. Nothing like the way he’d loved Gabe- nothing so fierce and sweet and painful- but more like the way one loves a sister. 

He’ll sooner die than cause any more harm to her than he already had.

“Come on, then,” Jack growls through his clenched teeth, an unwise use of his remaining air. “Cut the foreplay.”

He braces his feet against the floor and then surges upwards. His arms are still locked behind him and catch on the back of the chair, pulling at the muscle, but he still manages to headbutt that mask wavering in and out of his vision. It’s painful, aggravating his headache enough to make him gag, but absolutely worth it when his arms suddenly come free and he pitches forward onto the table.

The Reaper does not make a sound as he takes the blow, which is not very satisfying. All he does is lurch backwards and linger half-crouched, watching as Jack scrambles wildly to get his knees beneath him and up onto the table. The soldier kicks, unable to balance himself with his arms and his legs still bound. There’s not much leverage, but he’s strong enough even in his weakened state to put some force behind the blows. 

If he could reach anything, that is. The Reaper just ducks backwards, watching Jack flail with infuriating indifference. He’s only wearing himself out kicking like he is, he knows that, but he can’t just sit there impassively. 

The Reaper moves all at once, lunging forward and reaching with those curved talons. One of Jack’s kicks connects, and the creatures hisses out smoke but it doesn’t stop him. One of those claws snarls into Jack’s grayed hair, sending bolts of pain across his scalp as he’s heaved forwards and spilled onto the floor. Picked up by the scruff like a hissing, spitting animal. 

He’s still recovering from the pain and the black patches in his vision when he finds the steel toe of a boot digging mercilessly into his stomach. Jack wheezes, body convulsing once and then rolling away from the direction the blow had come. He grunts as he goes, trying to get his breath back. 

At least now he can tuck his legs up and pull his arms in front of him.

The roll puts his face level with the legs of the table, and the view gives him an idea. Slow, slow, he shifts onto his back and prods one bound hand experimentally along the span of his aching ribs. He takes a few shallow breaths, taut and anticipating, and watches the Reaper as he begins to circle like a wraith. 

“I’m not going to ask nicely,” The Reaper says, still sounding impassive and only mildly annoyed. “You know what we want. You either give us something we can use, or this carries on until you’re out.”

He pauses, takes in a shuddering, hissing breath, and lets it back out. Jack tries not to shiver. A long time ago, he used to have been stronger, more certain of his body and its capabilities. 

“You should be familiar with those rules, shouldn’t you? I hear that Overwatch got awfully nasty towards the end,” The Reaper croons down to him. Jack’s blood starts to heat. “Assassinations and kidnapping. I imagine you got your hands dirty.

“My intel could be wrong, though. Rumors,” His captor lifts one hand and gives it an airy wave, as if pushing the more grisly part of the topic away. “Things were so confusing back then. All I know for fact is that you’ve sullied your hands since taking up this ridiculous, glorified, self-serving  _ hero _ act.”

Jack glowers up at the Reaper, even though he knows his expression can’t be seen. He hopes that the heat of his anger is felt anyway. He wonders how old this man is, how much he’s seen and witnessed, what happened to make him this sadistic.

“I don’t need to justify myself to you,” He spits, blood and venom thick in every word. He can’t let it show how much those words got under his skin. So much that he could have stopped if he’d just paid attention. “What do you know about that- about making that choice? Have you hesitated even once? You don’t get to lecture me on getting my hands dirty, not when yours have never been clean a day in your life. I did it because I had to, you do it because you  _ like _ it. You don’t get to act like it’s the same thing.”

There’s heat in his words, real anger. Jack sets his jaw, trying to stop himself from talking so he won’t get another boot to the ribs. He feels wild with his fury. There’s nothing he wants more than to get his hands free and meet the Reaper on equal footing, where they can duke it out like they have a dozen times before. 

But, in truth, he’s not sure that their two situations were so different at the very end. Now that Overwatch has fallen into disgrace, accomplishing so few of the lofty aims it was born with, they might be the same. It was hard to justify means that the end didn’t reach. And the death toll was the same, no matter the intentions. 

He hopes his bravado was enough of a distraction, enough to keep the Reaper talking and wasting time while Jack works the chain of the shackles on his ankles into position against the leg of the table. 

But the Reaper does not respond. He snorts in what must be scorn, puffs out a cloud of ash. He must have seen. He  _ must _ see, but why isn’t he doing anything about it? Why isn’t he hauling Jack away from the table so he can keep the man bound as long as possible?

Jack figures he’ll get one shot in. Two if he’s extremely lucky, which is doubtful since his luck has run quite dry. However many the number, he has to make them count. Has to do what he can to fight back and injure. There’s no way he’ll be able to incapacitate the Reaper, but even if he did- what then?

He doesn’t allow himself to think so far ahead, lest he begins to doubt himself. He kicks, legs trembling with the strain as the chain goes taut against the table leg, and he groans with the strain. It doesn’t give. The Reaper’s head ticks, tilting sharply to the side. Again, once more, as sweat beads at the back of Jack’s neck and his eyes close with the effort.

There’s a metallic shriek of protest, a grinding sound, but he still doesn’t feel that  _ snap _ , that  _ give _ he’d been praying for. He drops his legs, eyes darting up to the motionless and impassive Reaper. Retaliation- punishment- can’t be far behind. So he decides not to wait for it, and launches himself at the man’s knees instead. 

The Reaper is waiting for him, and it’s too late for Jack to veer off when the man kicks again. 

There’s a sickening, bone-deep grind as the Reaper’s boot finds purchase once more, this time against his face. Jack falls back to the floor, mouth gaping soundlessly in agony. He stays limp, waiting for the nauseating pounding in his head to die down. Clashing dark and bright spots pulse behind his tightly closed eyes. His hands jerk in their shackles on an instinct, moving upwards to cover his face, hold it as he rides out the pain. They don’t get very far, and amount to just a twitch as he rolls, gasping, to curl up on his other side with his back to his captor. 

He does not open his eyes, but he can hear the Reaper sigh, hear the impact of his boot as he takes a single step back. 

“If you wanted those restraints gone so badly, you could have just tried to ask,” The wraith hums in an amused tone. The grinding sound of his voice makes Jack’s head throb. “And you’re wrong. You and I are the same, no matter what you tell yourself to make it easier to sleep. Every life that you take is a choice that  _ you _ make. You never have to kill. You  _ choose _ to do that.”

Jack wants to spit at him. He wants to snarl and declare that they could never be similar, that he could never be like this monster of a man, but it would be a lie. 

The Reaper pauses, as if he’s waiting for Jack to retort, but Jack can’t find it in himself to. His jaw aches. His tongue throbs. There’s a fresh trickle of irony blood on the inside of his mouth. Footsteps come closer and he jerks his eyes open, trying to track the Reaper’s path. His vision swims for a moment, but he can see the man, can unsteadily watch him resume his circling around Jack’s curled body. 

Everything should be falling into place as he lifts his head barely an inch to watch the wraith’s loping path, but it’s not. Things flicker in and out, snap in and out of focus with errant, dead pixels. A leaden feeling of dread settles into Jack’s aching stomach and he grits his teeth, finding that this sends a sharp, miserable pang through his jaw and straight up to the insides of his ears. 

If Talon knew just how heavily he relied upon his visor, it would have been gone before he woke up. He couldn’t let on, and he couldn’t let it take any more damage. 

“Let’s start with someone easy,” The Reaper says as he walks around Jack. “Lena Oxton,” He pauses after saying the name, as if waiting for Jack to react. When he does not, the wraith carries on- “Tracer. The rookie. The Slipstream girl,”- as if Jack does not know who he’s talking about. “She was only in there for a little, wasn’t she? Must be hard to keep her hidden with how lively she is. We know she’s not dead. Half the world would shut down if that little sunbeam died.”

Jack still does not respond. He keeps his silence, tries to work out why it would be Lena they first asked for. The Reaper’s words have a ring of truth; Lena was beloved across the globe despite her ties to Overwatch and its questionable actions. Why would Talon go after her first? Jack knew that some old members of Overwatch had already disappeared, some bodies had been found, and he could only assume Talon was behind this. Their motive, he wasn’t sure, but killing Lena would just alert the world that much more sharply. It would bring eyes to them. 

“I haven’t heard from Oxton in years,” He says finally in honesty, scoffing. It’s honest, sure, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been keeping tabs on her. He was relieved to find she’d come out of things alright, and had found her own way, built a life for herself. He couldn’t have imagined endangering her by trying to make contact. She has others to keep her safe. Others with a significantly lower bounty on their heads than his.

“I haven’t heard from  _ anyone _ in years. As far as the old crew knows, I’m dead. So don’t bother asking; the answer’s going to be the same no matter who the question’s about,” He goes on, flat and hard, glaring at the Reaper from behind his visor.

The other man has stopped moving, has stopped when Jack was halfway through his response. Another sigh leaves him, this one deeper and heavier than the last, trailing out streams of smog beneath that mask. His head tilts, but not in the sharp gesture that he does so often, like a bird eyeing its prey. This time, he tilts his backwards, slightly to the left, in the direction of one of the cameras planted into the ceiling. Jack very vividly thinks of the image of someone looking at one of their friends, one eyebrow raised, scoffing,  _ ‘this guy’ _ . 

“Wrong answer,” Is all the Reaper says before he, well, dissolves. 

Even with the way Jack’s visor is malfunctioning, it’s obvious that this isn’t any kind of parlor trick. His body materializes into a hollow of smoke that roils and twists through the air with a conscious of its own. Jack has seen the smoke before that the man breaths, seen the black fluid that leaches from him instead of blood, but not this. 

He thinks that he’s seen a forest fire that looked that way, once. The ruin it had left behind was unimaginable. There’s a snarl reverberating through the air bone deep, leaving him feeling cold in a way that makes him feel he won’t ever get warm. The choppy hair at the back of his neck stands on end. He is caught, staring at what is most definitely his demise, like the way a deer stands stock still and stares at the oncoming car, caught between awe and terror. 

Jack barely has the time to think he should probably be trying to move before the Reaper is barreling down onto him, unmistakably solid. All furious bulk and sharp claws. 

He feels the heavy leather of his coat shred like it barely presents a challenge, and then claws are sinking through and grazing his shoulder. More are digging his chin, his throat, cradling his larynx in a death grip. The man’s weight presses down against him, a quick but gradual shift as his legs reform, and Jack is trapped. Trapping drawing jerky, tights gasps under a crushing grip that barely allows any room for an inhale. He hadn’t thought that being more lightheaded was even possible and he’s pretty sure that his windpipe is going to be crushed any second now. 

“You’re a bad liar,” The Reaper growls down at him, their masks only inches apart. “Unfortunately for the both of us, I don’t get to get rid of you right away. I get to keep asking that question, for everyone that you’ve ever known, until you answer efficiently.”

Jack chokes for a moment, trying to get in the air to spit out a witty retort. It’s a struggle, but the Reaper lets up a little, apparently wanting to hear what he has to say.

“Then quit fucking around,” He manages, voice ugly and strangled under the Reaper’s grip. Smoke is trailing off of the man, even when he’s solid like this, rising off his back and trailing from under his mask like he’s steaming, being cooked under all that leather. It’s hellish. Jack’s seen a lot, heard a lot, but it’s still so  _ unnerving _ , a visceral sort of wrongness.

“Keep asking. See if the answer changes any,” The words come out in pants and gasps, choppy. Jack’s eyelids droop, and he prays that he doesn’t sound as close to passing out as he feels. 

His ribs ache under the pressure, and it seems to only be building with each second. His arms are caught beneath the Reaper’s legs, pinned by his weight. He can hear his heartbeat roaring in his ears. In a burst of adrenaline that is going to cost him so dearly later, he shifts his weight and throws the point of his shoulder into the Reaper. His boots grind against the concrete and there’s not much room to aim, but the Reaper is broad and his chest is hardly a small target. 

He knows that shoving the Reaper will cost him, tears those claws across his throat, but he barely thinks about the gamble, just throws himself into it without a second thought. Using his body like a battering ram is equal parts unwise and unsustainable, but what else can he do? Let himself be choked out until he’s unconscious, then wake up to do it again? The blow strikes the Reaper right in what must be his sternum, and he rears upwards without a sound. Those claws drag free, scraping against skin only for a moment before cutting cleanly through. More bloodloss to worry about. Great.

Jack kicks again, writhes, unsure of what exactly he’s making contact with, how effective it’ll even be against a man that can disintegrate at will. He heaves himself upwards, slamming himself against the Reaper like a charging animal, wounded and frantic. He wants him on his back, thinks that he might have just half a shot- not even, maybe just a prayer- if he can manage that. 

It’s no small feat against someone- something- built like this, and Jack is still in chains. He’s struggling to stay alert against repeated choking and blood loss. For all that the S.E.P. tried to equip him against and prepare him for, there was no way they could ever have anticipated this. 

“ _ Idioto _ ,” The Reaper grinds out, rearing upwards and half lifting himself. He reaches down to grasp the tattered collar of Jack’s coat, heaving the vigilante’s weight upwards to suspend his torso above the ground. He lets go for a moment, grabs back on before Jack has fallen an inch, catching a better hold. Then he slams Jack down. 

He’s left winded and barely has the time to process impact before the Reaper is lifting him again to repeat the process. It’s too fast for him to prepare for the impact, and he just falls rigid and heavy against the floor. The blows echo across his sternum, through his bruised ribs, and his mind goes blank with the pain, the throbbing in every one of his nerves. He’s barely cognizant of the Reaper letting go of his jacket, and it’s all he can do to breath.

Something at the back of his mouth shifts unsettlingly, but he can only register the sensation, not act upon it. The Reaper shifts, sliding his legs apart so that he’s straddling Jack’s chest instead of resting upon it. A mercy, or maybe a foresight to not crush the man’s ribs. He does not grab onto Jack again, but his hands stay lifted, poised and ready to come back down.

Every breath comes too sharp and sends a fresh, knifing jolt of pain through him. Jack stays still for several long moments and thinks, staring blankly through the dim, red haze over his vision, that he can’t fucking  _ breathe _ . Just shallow little wheezes that feed his body’s autonomic panic responses. An endless loop that sends his heart rattling into his throat. 

The output of his visor won’t resolve itself back into that bland white room. He’s not sure if it’s actually broken or if it’s just a few wires that have some loose. It was made to withstand a hell of a lot, but between the long, bitter fight that landed him in there and the beat he’s since taken in this room, Jack’s not fond of the odds. He can’t check with his hands still bound and still trapped beneath the Reaper’s weight. 

He doesn’t sit up. His head is still throbbing, and there’s a pain laying across his sternum like a physical weight. Heavy as wet cement, keeping him on the floor as he struggles to breath through it. He knows better than to hope that the Reaper will just leave him alone if he stays down; the wraith is an unsettling stillness in the room that Jack can feel against his stomach even if he can’t altogether see it. Large and looming, waiting for him to move first. 

“You bored yet?” Jack asks, voice like the sigh of an old house when the weather turns sour. Creaking and groaning at the seams. “You ever get sick of this shit?”

Maybe there’s a bit more of a tired desperation than a fight in those words. He swallows something solid down his knotted throat and presses the tip of his tongue into a raw-nerved bloody hole somewhere in the left side of his mouth. There’s a sting that rewards him, and his stomach churns. 

“We’re only just getting started,” The Reaper responds with a low, otherworldly chuckle. His head tilts to one direction, then the other, and then he lowers one of those clawed hands towards Jack’s face. 

Jack jerks away from the reach of that hand before he can check himself. There’s just the feeling, the blotted image of something moving towards him, and then a quick, instinctual jolt backwards. He doesn’t get very far of course, pinned as he is, and the Reaper does not hesitate in his actions. Jack squeezes his eyes shut childishly, but he can still hear the high whine of claws on cracked plastic and metal, feel the material give under the sharp edge of talons. 

“I’m not bored. I don’t get bored. I’m just letting you breathe. Hitting over and over blends the pain together, don’t you know? You have to space it out, so that it’s fresh,” The Reaper traces the cracks in his visor like one would trace the trail of a map, then he paws lazily at the thing, as if he’s indecisive on what to do with it.

There’s a dire sort of feeling that settles into this still moment between blows and questions. The Reaper talks like he’s an eager Torture 101 instructor, but there’s a ringing desperation that comes with Jack being forced to acknowledge that he’s going to be there a good long while.

He’s going to be there a while and he’s already torched one of his best resources, with nothing to show for himself except a couple broken ribs and something inside of his mouth that just won’t stop bleeding. The sour stomach that comes from adrenaline and swallowing nothing but blood for hours.

Jack’s eyes open and he stares at the red haze the visor provides, tries to chart the movements of the claws traveling along it. His breath catches with every slide they make across the shattered expense of his visor, and he tries to keep his body still, tries to keep silent. 

Distantly, like it’s happening to someone else, he can faintly hear his shaking hands rattling the cuffs binding them. He’s lost his momentum, and he’s not sure how much longer he’s going to be able to keep himself alert.

But he can’t shake the terror that makes him think he needs to  _ be _ there for whatever comes next. Not just be a prone body on the floor that won’t, that can’t react. 

It doesn’t occur to him that that’s the point, that it’s all just a big, ugly pageant just for him. That it stops the moment he’s not present. He’s too stubborn, too spooked by the thought of not being in control. 

“You’re too weak for the good stuff now, anyway,” The Reaper says, quiet and soft, and Jack can barely focus on what the man’s saying. “Dehydrated. Hungry too, I bet. They’ll feed you after I go. Let you get your strength up a little, then I can come back and play with you properly.”

The wraith’s grip finds the place where metal meets skin, and then fastens. Tightens. Prying beneath the visor and tugging. Jack winces like he’s taking a physical blow when he feels more than hears the visor pull free. There’s just a small scraping sound and sensation, a grinding by his temples, and then the dry air is pressing a greeting to skin that’s barely seen the light outside his own miserable hideout. 

He shuts his eyes before he can watch the red haze fade to nothing but dim, blurry images. It’s childish looking, really, like a boy pretending that monsters won’t exist if he can’t see them. 

He can’t keep them closed forever, though. He knows that even if it doesn’t know what the Reaper will see when he sees them. Jack hasn’t seen his own face in full detail without the visor in more than a decade. There’s a sort of cloudy haze across already pale blue eyes, a slight reflective sheen. The scars of a wound he couldn’t tend to and see at the same time that healed ugly, a crooked span of thick scar tissue across the bridge of his nose and the corner of his mouth. 

The Reaper’s breath catches as he sees for the first time the face of his nemesis, sees the truth in the man’s eyes. It would be almost laughable under other circumstances to hear the wraith be anything but condescending and aggressive, but Jack is far from laughing. He sees and hears the misshapen blob that is the Reaper toss his mask aside, tries to map the clatter and skid of it after it hits the floor. 

The Reaper’s hands hover close for a long heartbeat, and he thinks about biting. Thinks he’s not even sure if the Reaper would feel it through that leather. Thinks that’s the sort of trick you only get to pull once, and that he’s going to raise hell when they send someone softer in to coax food into him. He wonders what kind of leverage he’d have with a hostage, wonders how he got so cruel, thinks desperation isn’t a good look for him. 

“Look at you,” The Reaper croons in a tone that is sickeningly sweet with false pity. He sounds delighted, overjoyed with his discovery. The tone catches Jack in the gut with a hot surge of anger, vicious as the jab of a knife. “Old soldier. I wonder how you made it at all after Switzerland with eyes like that. It must have been such a feat. I can’t imagine how helpless you felt.”

The tip of a claw touches between Jack’s milky eyes, tapping directly onto that thick band of scar tissue. 

“I wonder who helped you get your sight back.”

Then the hand is across Jack’s face, splaying gently like he’s a dead man having his eyes closed. Somehow the fact that those hands are laying on his face where he can’t shove them away and not aiming to peel him open is harder to stomach than the Reaper’s voice. Violence is an easy thing to make sense of, to form a reaction to.  _ That _ comes naturally to him, but not this. This light, invasive touch. 

The grip tightens. The claws don’t dig in, but the Reaper holds tighter, and Jack doesn’t have the time to brave himself before he’s struck once, hard, beneath his jaw. His head, still as fragile as it’d been when he’d first woken up, throbs with pain in time with his heartbeat once, twice before he’s out. Limp beneath the Reaper and sagging towards the floor again. 

He hears the scrape of metal on concrete, a rushing sound that leaves a profound chill in the air, and then there’s nothing at all.

Soon, the dim emptiness of unconsciousness gives way to memories. There’s no images, just sensations. The thick grit of rubble and ash, the way that every breath burned with it. Lungfuls of foot and pulverized concrete that he gagged on, crawling sightless through the ruins of the Zürich HQ. The sting and sear of his hands as he dragged himself through the smoldering debris. 

_ Helpless _ didn’t begin to cover it. 

He feels helpless here, locked in the cell, but back then he’d thought death had been a certainty. Here it was only a matter of how long it’d take for his body to give out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure that the following chapters will not be as long as this one. I hope that I can do both these characters proper justice and that my writing is enjoyable.  
> The next chapter will be from Gabriel's point of view. I plan to make the POV switch with each chapter, but some exceptions will probably be made.  
> I'll try to update again soon, but unfortunately my muse is subject to drastic drops.  
> **The first two or so chapters of this are based upon I roleplay I began a few months ago, which has since fizzled out.


	2. Chapter 2

As Jack convulses for half of a second and then goes limp, mouth slack, Gabriel thinks that there is no sight in the world more satisfying. 

He lets go of Jack with an unnecessary hum of disgust and rises to his feet, stepping away from the unconscious man. This has been enough. The rules have been made clear, and even though Gabriel didn’t get anything out of it, he had the satisfaction of causing pain. Jack will need nourishment before their next meeting, or else he won’t last more than five minutes. The amount of blood he’s lost isn’t doing him favors. 

The door unlocks with a heavy sound as the Reaper moves towards it, but it doesn’t open up any more than a fraction of an inch; a gap that even a mouse would not be able to fit through. This does not annoy him, though. This is how it usually will be, to avoid Jack trying to force his way through. Gabriel disintegrates, lapses into wisps of smoke to flow through the crack and out onto the other side, reforming once he’s on the other side. 

It’s a strange feeling, becoming incorporeal, spreading oneself thin. An ability that was a hard one to live with and cope with the affects of, but it was perfect for that scratching that itch for dramatic flair. 

There are two guards outside of the door. Two unnecessary body bags that, for the most part, will just stand there with nothing to do until their shift has ended and they’re relieved by two others. No entertainment except for what they will faintly hear through the thick door. Gabriel has no words for them, does not even look at them as he moves away from the holding cell. They do not try to speak to him, but they stare after him as he stalks down the hall. 

Unlike Jack’s holding cell, the rest of the base is, for the most part, thankfully much less blaringly bright and lacking in any reminiscence of a medical wing. Instead, it’s dim, overcast with an oppressive crimson glow. The rooms and the hallways alike are tall but narrow. Everything is eerie and has a heavy sinister vibe. Thick lead pipes run through the ceiling all around the base, and there are cameras hidden in the most unsuspecting places. Talon is paranoid, untrusting of any of its soldiers. Any inch of disloyalty, any ounce of suspicious movement is not tolerated. 

It’s quiet. In Overwatch bases, there would almost always be the clamoring of voices, of weapons being tested, of machinery grinding deep in the ground. Here, there is nothing. It’s like everything is muffled, laid over with a layer of cotton. It’s unnerving, sometimes, but at least it doesn’t aggravate the piercing headaches that Gabriel gets so often.

There’s no need to report anywhere now that his job is, for the moment, finished. Gabe has an earpiece that he’s required to wear whenever he goes into the cell for safety measures, and the plan is for there to be at least one guard stationed at the camera feed at any given moment to keep watch and record. Then Talon will know what’s happened and when each session is over, when the right times to feed their prisoner would be. For a while still, though, there will probably be more than just one at the cameras. Soldier: 76 is not a popular character in Talon, and many have reason to hate him. They’ll enjoy the show. 

With this little torture session now his top priority, Gabriel has been relieved of major fieldwork for the foreseeable future. If he’s needed and there is no one else to replace him- not that anyone could if they tried, there is no one like him- then he’ll be called to go, but only if the situation is dire. A bargain The only annoyance that comes with this order is that he’ll have less time to spend with Amélie, who is nearly always on a mission and takes her work very seriously. At the rare instances that she does have free time, she likes to hole herself up in her room or disappear off onto one of the rooftops.

Amélie, the only one that Gabriel will willingly admit he enjoys the company of, the only one who will sit quietly and listen to him growl and brood, the only one who is not always trying to figure him out, work out the pieces of who he is and why he’s here. He’s grateful for her. She’s sat with him through the bad nights and fed him dark chocolate after he’d stopped fluctuating and tearing pieces of himself away. 

There’s a comforting, familiar feeling that comes with her company. It’s distant, wrapped in smoke, and Gabe has long since stopped trying to wash it into clarity. It’s like a ghost of a memory, like a forgotten childhood event brought on suddenly by a smell or a sound. 

Even though nothing of use has yet been dragged out of their little prisoner, Gabriel knows that the commanders will be pleased. They’ll see that he is more than willing to do harm, eager for it, that there’s no hesitation in him to torment despite history. That’s why they proposed the job to him, after all. They’re confident in his abilities to pry every last piece of information out of Jack. In all truth, they are more confident in him than he is in himself. 

When the news had first reached him that Morrison had been captured, it had been all Gabriel could do to not demand to see him at once. He had held him tongue only because he knew he had to be careful. His history- the biggest parts of it, at least- is well known to his employers, as is his poor opinion of the now former members of Overwatch. They know that he was the commander of Blackwatch and that he was one of the original founding members. There are smaller things, details that he, for some reason or another, did not feel the need to share. One of these details is the nature of the relationship he’d had with Jack. 

He does not know why he ever failed to mention it, or why it feels so important now to purposefully keep it a secret instead of just not thinking it important enough to mention. He knows that it had been kept a secret back in Overwatch’s golden days, as much as it could be. The other founding members had known, and the kids in Blackwatch had known or suspected. All that had mattered then was keeping the director from knowing so that Jack wouldn’t appear too biased to be Strike Commander. What mattered now was keeping Talon’s executives from knowing. Maybe it was to ensure that now Gabriel wouldn’t appear biased,  wouldn’t look like he was trying to help. 

Because of this, it was also important to keep  _ Jack _ from knowing. If he figured it out, then he’d make an uproar. This, Gabriel knows as a deep certainty in his gut, but he does not know what backs it. 

The time that Gabriel has to himself while Jack is out is used primarily used to refuel. Food has long since been made easy to find and the stocks are kept full almost all the time. Even so, he has a hoarded stash in the singular room he was given. The room that he scarcely uses because he almost never feels the need to sleep anymore, and because Amélie’s room is larger and more comfortable to hide out in when he’s out of control.

Everyone knows how much the Reaper needs to eat, knows how vast the amount of food he has to take in to make up for the energy he’s constantly burning just by keeping his form stable and physical. It’s a taxing thing, keeping himself from disintegrating into ashes at any given moment. They’ve all either seen or heard about the way he inhales everything within reach before a big mission in case that he needs that extra burst of energy- and how he does the same afterwards.

Once upon a time, before he had died, Gabriel was a picky eater. He remembers having an appetite only for certain foods, complaining when he didn’t get what he wanted but eating anyway out of necessity. He remembers, once, that Jesse and-

But now he doesn’t care as long as he just gets food into him. Things don’t quite taste the same anyway; more often than not it’s like he’s eating mouthfuls of ash. He can’t afford to be picky. All that matters is that he maintains enough energy to keep his form stable, so he doesn’t start coming apart.

The session has left him tired. He’s not injured at all, of course; nothing Jack did even came close to harming him, even with all that thrashing around. Jack’s much too weak to do any real damage. Gabriel’s just, drained. 

Wisps of smoke are starting to come off of him by the time he reaches one of the handfuls of small, cramped kitchens in the base. Oppressive lighting and dull tiled floor, the sleek shape of a metal fridge. The constant, bone-deep ache that grips him has sharpened, become a prick instead of a nudge, a knife pressing into his gut instead of the threatening presence of a fist. It was probably unwise to disintegrate like he had when he’d dropped down onto Jack; he could have lunged and still had the same effect, but he’d wanted to scare the soldier. He’d wanted-  _ wants _ to have every bit of power over his captive as he can. He wants Jack to suffer. 

Gabriel removes his mask to eat, but keep his earpiece in so he can be told when Jack’s awake and ready for him to come back. He doesn’t expect the call to come for a while, but he has to be ready when it does.

It’s almost strange, taking off the mask, like he’s slipping off one identity and falling into another. He’s become so used to having the mask on, so used to being the Reaper every moment, that it’s hard to be anything else. He feels vulnerable and exposed without the mask, somehow weaker, more human. 

He’s seen himself without the mask on, and while the sight does not actively repel him or make his stomach churn, it is not a pretty. It’s not how he’s supposed to look. It’s, wrong. It gives him a bottomless, unsettling feeling to look at a face that he knows is not his, that’s ugly and gnarled, scarred and emaciated.

While he digs out container after container of food from the fridge and cabinets in the kitchen, he tries to savor the sensation of feeling Jack squirm beneath him. He’s been waiting a long time to get that man under his claws, to enact his revenge on the one that deserves it the most. The battles that they had on equal ground in the streets and in warehouses were enjoyable, sure. They got whatever gunk had replaced his blood pumping, made him feel a rush like nothing else could, not even killing. A rush that’s addictive, like the high of a drug, that makes him shake from the giddiness afterwards.

Even after he beats everything out of Jack, pulls every bit of information that exists from those lips, Gabriel’s going to keep him around as a toy to sharpen his claws and get that high again. Anything else would be too good for Jack. It would be less than what he deserved. That’s the plan, anyway. He’s sure that Talon won’t mind any, since their use of Jack will have run its course.

Eating makes his body feel better. Soothes that full-body pain back down to the normal dull ache that lingers in his nerves. The perks of being undead. 

The call for him to come back happens sooner than it should. With the prisoner’s dehydration and the state that Gabriel had left him in, Jack should be out for hours still. Maybe it has been hours, and the time had just slipped through his claws without him noticing. It happens like that, sometimes, when he eats enough to feed a family. All he thinks about is replenishing his energy, and nothing else.

The voice that purrs to him through the static suggests getting the captive some water to tide him over until feeding, and Gabriel cannot squash the feeling of surprise that rises in his chest. It must not have been long, then, if they haven’t already fed him. Or maybe they’ve trying to find a baseline, figure out how long they can starve him before he starts to crack. 

He growls an affirmative response and puts away the container of hummus that he’d been eating from, fetches his mask from where he’d left it resting on the counter to put it back on. As he opens the fridge to get a bottle of water for Jack, it occurs to him that if they haven’t fed him, then he can’t be as rough as he wants- not unless he wants Jack out early or to come within an inch of killing him so soon. And, honestly, he would rather not do the latter. He’d rather keep it as a threat, dangle it above Jack’s head to keep him afraid until he thinks that the Reaper is bluffing, push his limits, and then find out- again- that Gabriel does not bluff. 

So he’ll have to play good cop instead of doing what he wants. To the best of his abilities, anyway. He hasn’t ever really been good at that: playing nice.

The guards stare openly at the sight of the Reaper prowling back down the dimly lit hall with a bottle of water clasped in his talons. Stare at the bottle, that is. They’re not stupid enough to try and stare down the Reaper, who is known for sharpening his claws and using his teeth. Nor are they stupid enough to question what on earth it is that he’s doing with the bottle, or if he intends on giving it to Morrison. Their expressions are almost comically surprised as they unlock the heavy door to let him slip inside, pushing it open the meager inch that Gabriel needs to enter.

As he reforms inside of the room, he casts a glance around it, searching out Jack and looking to monitor the state that he’s in. Jack is laying down still, but, to Gabriel’s surprise, he’s managed to free his legs and his hands. The flimsy thin chain between his ankles looks like it was wrenched at until it broke, so he can only assume Jack broke it against one of the table legs, like he’d tried to do earlier. One of Jack’s hands is still in the thick cuffs that it’d been locked in, but the other is free and bare of its glove, which lies discarded near the soldier. The sides of the free hand look raw, and blood is seeping out of the first knuckle of the thumb. 

Blood, which still stirs at Gabriel’s anger despite having already seen it and drawn it himself earlier. Something else that Jack still possesses and does not deserve; something else that was taken from Gabe. If he could, he would drain Jack of every drop.

Jack’s visor lays on the floor where Gabe tossed it. Jack’s probably not strong enough to move and retrieve it. His head twists towards the sound of the door closing, blind blue eyes staring blankly in search of something to lock onto. Gabe’s not sure if Jack’s sight is completely gone, or if it’s only partially, if there’s still shape and color to his vision, only lacking in distinct clarity. 

It’s ironic, almost. Jack had always been blind, unwilling to see what was there, what Gabriel showed him was right under his nose, and now he really is. The only returning eye that the explosion took from Jack after all it had taken from Gabe. A lacking trade,

“I’ve got water for you, Morrison,” Gabriel growls, watching Jack’s expression shift briefly into recognition as he realizes who it is that’s come in. He’s gone soft behind that mask. “I know that they haven’t fed you yet, and it looks like you could use some.”

Jack grunts and moves to pull himself slowly up to sit. There’s a stiffness to his motions, an unsteadiness that gives away just how weak he is.

He doesn’t make it all the way up, doesn’t sit straight. Instead, he keels half way forwards, shoulders slumped, arms bracing him against the ground. It’s easy to see how hard it is for Jack to stay conscious, see how every movement is a battle against his pain and his dehydration. 

It looks like he would topple if Gabriel so much as blew on him, looks like he shouldn’t have any business sitting up at all. Hell, it’s probably only thanks to the S.E.P. that he can. Gabriel’s seen bigger men than Morrison bleed puddles that big before, and they hadn’t even been able to roll over.

The sit up seems to have disoriented Jack, since he stays blinking for a moment, staring around until he tilts his head in Gabriel’s direction. Gabe is unhelpfully silent, and realizes as Jack’s head swings towards him that he’s been holding his breath.

Not that he needs to breathe. Not very often, at least. It doesn’t hurt when he forgets to inhale, doesn’t burn in that hot knot in his chest, doesn’t make him lightheaded like it used to when he was still alive. It takes much longer for those kinds of affects to start settling in.

“I’m not going to do tricks for it, if that’s what you’re hoping,” Jack says gruffly, and Gabriel snorts. 

“Damn,” He responds, tone dripping with sarcasm. “And here I was hoping that I’d get to have myself another show. I guess I’ll have to wait until later, when you don’t look like you’d die if I pushed you.”

The image that conjures into his mind is an amusing one: Jack eating right out of his palm and answering immediately to everything asked of him, obeying without question. Laughable in the moment, but Gabe knows that it could never be like that. Jack is far too proud, too stubborn, and Stockholm has never been a specialty of Gabriel’s, nor something he could easily stomach.

He starts to cross the room towards Jack, and watches as his captive tries to track his path. Deciding to give a kindness, Gabriel brings the tips of two claws together every few steps, tapping the sharpened metal against each other to create a sharp  _ tink _ of a sound. Metallic and high pitched, a sound Jack can track him with.

Once he reaches Jack, he tosses the bottle at him, watches the man startle as it hits his legs and fumble his hands, hanging cuff clattering. Wordlessly, Gabriel turns and glides away, going to fetch the visor. He studies it as he lifts it off the floor, turns it over in his talons. As far as he can tell, it doesn’t look much worse for wear than it already had. Maybe a few smaller, new cracks spider webbing between the ones that had already been there. Not that he knows how it works. Something could have snapped inside of it and broken it permanently, he wouldn’t know or care.

Turning, he goes back to Jack and kneels down in front of him, a foot or so away. Balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, shoulders hunched, weight shifted slightly forwards so he’s ready to spring if he has to. He sets the visor on the floor and nudges it over to Jack, watches it skid and bump into Jack’s knee. Jack doesn’t react for a moment, just stares blankly, holding the water bottle now in hands half drawn up to his chest. Gabe stares, and feels stupid because there’s no point in staring down a blind man.

“Good cop act needs some polish,” Jack finally says with a short, miserable hack of a laugh. He turns his head towards Gabriel- a little too high and a little to the left- with an expression that was open but blank, drawn slightly as he’s trying to track any coming movement. 

Despite the near overwhelmingly strong impulse to snap back with a witty remark, Gabriel keeps his silence instead and just hopes that Jack can feel his glower. Even with as bad a nice act as his, at least it’ll keep Jack guessing, make him unsure of what sort of nature he’ll be greeted with every time the door opens.

Jack’s hands move and Gabriel’s head snaps on instinct, watching even though he knows that there’s no secret weapon for Jack to pull on him. He watches Jack put down the bottle and reach for his visor, fumble for a moment as he lifts it and traces his fingers over it, eyes darting down but not locking onto the shape. His face narrows into a frown as he lifts it, knocks against his own nose, reorients himself, and then slides it into place over his eyes. There’s a spark when he does this, sharp and errant, an audible  _ snap _ that fizzes across the seam of his visor. It makes the both of them jump; Jack nearly drops the thing and Gabriel rocks backwards, inhaling the breath for a hiss that he holds at the last second. 

He’s not watching to try and find out how the visor works. It’s no concern of his, and of no interest to him either. He’s more concerned with learning about the way Jack moves, the changes in the man’s manner that have taken effect after such long years. He’d rather adapt to the changes here, in real time, instead of spending hours on the other side of that glass, watching but not acting. 

His silence persists as Jack settles his visor into place and reaches slowly down for the bottle, lifting it. The man holds it for a moment, staring, probably wondering if it’s safe or not. Gabriel’s not about to tell him it came directly from Talon’s stores; he’ll let Jack think whatever he wants about the water. Whether or not it’s dosed, Jack doesn’t have the option to give it up. 

Apparently coming to a similar decision, Jack twists the top off the bottle and lifts it, drinks it like it’s the first taste of water he’s had in weeks. More than half of it is gone when he lowers the bottle a moment later. The dehydration must be taxing indeed if Jack is dumb enough, desperate enough to drink all of it like that, instead of saving it. Just one bottle won’t be able to replenish the blood he lost, but Gabe isn’t going to fetch another one. That’ll have to tide Jack over until a proper meal is brought to him.

“What do you want, then?” Jack asks, taking another drink, this one smaller, slower, like he’s remembered his good sense and decided to savor instead of waste. 

“You know what we want,” There’s a bitter taste left in Gabriel’s mouth as he refers to himself as part of a bigger corporation. It’s a strange, foreign feeling to say ‘we’ as if he belongs to a cause. He works alone, except for when it suits him, and he can break away whenever he wants. 

“I want what you know about the former agents. All of them. No one is more or less important than another. Everything that would help me track them down,” He rocks back on his heels again, knowing that it’s not true. Talon wants all of them sure, they all matter equally in the eyes of Talon. But Gabriel wants the good doctor and that filthy little  _ vaquero _ most of all.

Jack settles himself back against the wall for support with a quiet grunt of exertion and a slow shuffle of boots on concrete. Feet flat against the floor, ready, but with his head supported in one hand. He takes more sips as he listens, each one smaller and later than the last. Gabriel eyes him, trying to figure out who it is Jack’s thoughts first go to, who he’s the most desperate to protect. Lena? The doctor?

“I know you’re not going to give them all up so easily,” Gabe says slowly. “And you’re too weak to drag anything out of you now. They just wanted me to make sure you don’t die of dehydration, since you’re no use dead. Wanted me to see if you were feeling more amiable.”

“And do I seem  _ amiable _ to you?” Jack counters in a thick voice as he pulls his hand away from his face, flexing it. Such a sharp response comes as a surprise and an appreciation. Jack’s not out of fuel yet. 

After a beat, Gabriel laughs. It’s a low, rasping sound, feeling and sounding like it’s crawling its way forcibly out of his lungs. He waves one hand, lifts his shoulders in a ghost of a shrug. 

“This is about the most amiable I’ve ever seen you be. I should’ve pumped you full of drugs and bled you within an inch of your life months ago; it would’ve saved me a lot of trouble and a lot of hostility.”

Jack huffs, a sound that’s half exasperation and half amusement, and leans his head back against the wall. There’s something familiar about the posture, a tiredness that reaches his mind now that it’s soaked into every inch of his body. Gabriel bundles up that familiar feeling and pushes away violently, settles in to wait for Jack to break the silence first.

“You know, I’ve been wondering something,” The soldier says after several long moments, swallowing the last bit of water he had. Something cold and sharp grips the base of Gabriel’s spine, drags upwards slow and brings the chill with it. “What is it you get out of all this? Not- not Talon, I mean  _ you _ . Can’t be you enjoy getting rented out as an attack dog.”

Unsmiling, brows drawn together tight. Gabriel wants to snarl at the solicitous look on Jack’s face, wants to tear that expression right off his skull. 

It’s not an unexpected question, really. It’s one that’s been asked of Gabe many times before by varying people and for varying reasons. Even Amélie has asked him, before. But he can see what Jack’s trying to do. Jack isn’t stupid. Under the guise of his good boy, must-help-everyone act, he’s trying to make sense of his captor. Trying to find any scrap of humanity left in the Reaper that he can take advantage of, any way to find empathy between them so he can tug at Gabe’s heartstrings, make him go soft. Find a friend among his enemies and save his own skin. Find a way to make the blows softer, at the very least. 

It’s just too bad the golden boy’s sweet talk doesn’t work anymore. 

Gabe opens his mouth to growl, to spit that it  _ is _ because he likes being an attack dog, thank you, having his leash loose and being ready to taste blood. The chill digs into his skin like dozens of needles pricking his skin, and he knows he can’t say that without making it sound as if he belongs to Talon. Making it sound like they made him. 

The truth comes, suddenly, before he can stop it from rasping from his throat: “Revenge.” 

There’s half of a pause, an uncertainty before he mirrors Jack’s query as a distraction from his own answer. 

“And you? What’s the point of running around dressed like an idiot trying to save the people who think you’re dead? They won’t ever thank you for it.”

Jack make a contemplative sound, runs his tongue over his cracked lips, waits for a moment like he actually has to think about it, like an answer doesn’t come to him immediately. 

“Remorse,” He says in an echo of the short, unhelpful response Gabriel tossed at him. It comes out dull, packed hard and flat as it drops from his mouth. Then, “I’ve never been looking for anyone’s gratitude.”

Gabriel snorts, rocks his weight back again and huffs out smoke. Of course Jack would say something like that. It’s all about trying to do good in the world, trying to cover up his own mistakes and act like he’s  _ sorry _ , like all he wants to do is fix all the wrong. Can’t just own up to them instead and let things heal on their own, Jack has to stick his nose in and try to save face, try to save his precious, precious reputation. 

It’s easier to get forgiveness for a wrong that doesn’t affect the lives of hundreds. 

It’s a little too late to be remorseful, but Jack continues before Gabe can tell him that. 

“Revenge for what? There’s a lot to choose from; I won’t patronize you with a guess.”

Has Jack just lost his touch, or has he always been this bad at being clever and Gabriel just never noticed? What’s more likely: he doesn’t know how obvious he’s being thanks to the loss of blood and the pain. 

Well, two can play at this game, and Gabe knows that he’ll be the one to win. He’s smarter than Jack is, knows more. He always has, and even when Jack figured that out he had never admitted to it. He’ll let Jack think he’s gaining ground; feed him what he wants to hear, what’ll tug at his heartstrings the most. He’s always been soft, after all. Too soft to do what had to be done. 

“They took my family away from me,” More or less true. “Pulled them right out of my hands,” Gabriel flexes his claws, mimicking the motion of trying to hold onto something that wiggles free, like sand through a sieve or moonbeams through a grip. That icy feeling has reached his throat and is closing in on it, knotting. 

“The few that were left blamed me for it. I tried to protect them, and they died. I died.”

There’s a softness leaching into his tone that he doesn’t like. Memories budding in the heavy, inking vortex of his thoughts, but none of them are for Jack or the other founders. They’re for his own ranks instead, the kids that he’d plucked off the streets and given a home, the people he’d promised to protect. The kids that either betrayed him or were doomed by Jack’s foolhardy stubbornness. 

“You’ve heard worse, I’m sure. There are people worse off than I,” Gabriel breaths, exhaling smoke that stings the inside of his throat and his mouth. A hiss leaches into his voice, the hard anger and dislike that’s rooted deep in his mind for Jack. 

“Still. It must be hard hearing all the awful things you’re responsible for. Keeping your former friends safe won’t make up for what you’ve done. It won’t make it easier for you to sleep  or silence your conscience. Trying to keep up the ‘pure ideals’ of your supposed  _ golden age _ ,” He snorts again, this time in open disgust, and thinks to himself that he may be coming on too strong. Jack will see his anger and think that it’s a ruse to cover up the momentary softness that overtook him. “You’re a fool. You won’t ever forgive yourself, and neither will anyone else. There’s no redemption for you, Morrison.”

Gabriel stops then, holds his breath so he won’t heave, so he won’t pant out more searing smoke, and waits for Jack to bite back a retort, but nothing comes. Jack looks somber instead of angry, which is incredibly baffling. His head’s tipped down slightly, like he’s staring at the floor, and he sighs heavily before nodding. A sharp jerk up and then down, short and stiff. Unsatisfying. 

“Yeah,” He says, wiping his hand over his face, and then again, “Yeah, I know.”

Gabriel gets the feeling that this isn’t acting anymore, that the conversation’s sliding out of his grasp no matter how much he tries to dig his claws in. He has to regain control, banish that cold feeling creeping up the line of his jaw. 

“You’re right- but they don’t deserve to pay for what I’ve done. They were following orders, you have to understand that. They  _ trusted _ me. And I thought-” Jack doesn’t finish. He breaks off, lets it dangle and wilt in the air between them. Gabe realizes that he’s leaning forward, so much so that his balance is almost off, that he’s just about to keel forwards and he can’t stop the wondering if Jack is talking about  _ him _ . 

“They thought they were doing the right thing,” Jack says, barely a whisper. His side of his mouth tugs sharply downwards, warping the scars on his face, and Gabriel snaps backwards, repulsed by the emotion. 

He starts to shift his weight, rocking back and forth on his heels like the steady swing of a pendulum or a bored child. His face twitches behind his mask, lip curling up a sneer that he knows Jack can’t see. He scorns himself, his softness, tries to refuel his anger, burn back that cold feeling that’s making his tongue feel heavy and leaden in his mouth. 

It’s not real. Jack’s toying with him, trying to play to his pity, the empathy of both having lost things. Gabriel knows he’s hit a nerve, that was his goal in the first place, but Jack is trying to play him. Jack might be stupid, but not stupid enough to show blatant emotion like that without it being on purpose. 

Jack shifts, leaning forward from the wall, towards Gabriel, and Gabe tenses, pauses in his rocking on the swing backwards. 

“You know killing them won’t bring anyone back,” Jack tells him, and Gabe fancies they’re making eye contact even with both of them having their masks on. “They didn’t do this to you. I did.”

There’s a moment in which Gabriel wonders if his blood has started pumping again and he’s going into shock because of it, because it feels as if fire is coursing through his veins. There’s that excited giddiness that grips him, that livewire shock that lashes down his spines, driving back that cold feeling with a wall of fire when he gets that truth- that  _ confession _ . 

It’s not real, not enough, of course. Jack doesn’t know who he is yet, isn’t agonizing over what he’s done and what he caused to happen to Gabriel, but this can tide Gabe over for a while. This beseeching tone in Jack’s eyes, the open, truthful expression in his face. Even though he’s just trying to play nice, trying to pull the attention away from the bastards he’s trying to protect, he’s finally learning to take responsibility. 

“Of course I can’t bring them back. I wouldn’t  _ want _ to,” The Reaper breathes, matching Jack’s soft volume but not his tone. There’s a fierceness in his voice, a savage note that betrays the furious elation burning in him. He lifts a claw, motioning with it to himself, and breathes out a hot, searing plume of smoke. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, except for you. That’s not the  _ point _ .”

He rocks back forwards, braces his boots against the ground and pushes from it, lunges for Jack. He doesn’t strike, doesn’t tear into the man like he wants to do, like he  _ aches _ to do, he knows that Jack is still too fragile for that. He takes hold of the tattered collar of Jack’s jacket, thinks that soon there won’t be much collar left thanks to his claws, and shunts the soldier back against the wall. 

Jack doesn’t fight, whether from surprise or weakness or having the foresight to conserve his energy. He lifts his chin, brow furrowing into a glare, a challenge. His hands snap upwards halfway as Gabe comes, an initial defense mechanism, but then they’re brought deliberately upwards to clasp Gabriel’s wrist, his vambrace.  Their skin isn’t touching, not even close to it, but the pressure of that weak grip seems magnified. Adrenaline rises in the back of Gabe’s throat, feeds that fire, gives him that thrill he’s always seeking.

“You’re damn right it’s your fault,” He snarls from behind his mask, feeling his mouth twist into a wild grin. “But I’m not going to kill you. I can’t kill you. Even if I drew it out, made you beg for it, broke every damn bone in your body, it’d end with it being over. You’d be gone and it’d be  _ over _ for you, and you wouldn’t know what this feels like.”

There’s more smog coming now. Thick and invasive and stinking of rot. It burns the inside of Gabriel’s throat, the inside of his lungs, slithers against his sharp teeth and fills his chest until he feels as if he’ll burst or lapse into the stuff, become that oppressive black cloud of smoke. It’s a feeling that he should have gotten used to a long time ago. 

“I’m not going to kill them all because it’s their fault. I’m going to kill them to get at  _ you _ .”

The shift in Jack’s face in miniscule, but Gabriel catches it. The slight twitch in his mouth, the flare of his nostrils. It’s an expression that he’s seen before, back when he was still alive. The last time he’d seen it, Genji had-

It’s almost a half truth. He does want to hurt Jack. He wants him to agonize and fear and feel pain like Gabriel has felt for every waking moment for the last handful of years. That had been his sole plan for months. Talon just happened to have a bigger picture to show him, the means to give him at fulfilling that wish to the fullest and darkest extent.

“I lost my family. Now you’re going to lose yours.”

Gabriel holds on for a moment, his mask an inch away from Jack’s visor. He imagines Jack can feel the heat coming off of him, that he can taste the thrill like Gabe can taste it, bitter and sharp in the back of his throat. There’s no response, no retort or acknowledgement not even a crackle of static in his ear to tell him that things are getting too personal, so ultimately he just lets go. As he gets up and turns away from Jack, he can practically hear Amélie crooning a whisper into his head; ‘ _ Cutting it a little close, chère.’ _ There’s no sound behind to him to suggest Jack’s even trying to get back up.

The door opens wide enough for him just as he reaches it, and as he slides through it and reforms he glowers at both of the guards, who stare back at him. He growls once, at each of them, and then turns to storm down the hall. This time, he’ll be sure that Jack is fed within the hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter turned out being almost as long as the first, which wasn't my intention. I really enjoyed writing this and I think that I did Gabriel's character alright, set up the things that I wanted to set up and all that. I hope that my readers enjoy it too.  
> Really, I just want to dig right into the meat of this story but I feel like that'd be going in too fast. Unless I lose all control of myself or find a way to get things serious fast while keeping it paced nicely, the next two or so chapters will probably pretty much be time-fillers, foreshadowing, and more windows to Jack and Gabriel's character. Maybe Amélie will show up.


	3. Chapter 3

The empty space yawning in Jack’s chest threatens to swallow him whole when the Reaper lets go of his wrists. There was something crackling between them, something flooding off of the Reaper and filling the air with static. It was more than just raw anger, more than just the misdirected anger that Jack was so used to. There was something real in the furious words the Reaper had flung at him. Something personal. 

That only made things worse. Even if it hadn’t been personal, if the tone the Reaper had taken on hadn’t struck such a cord in Jack, the truth in the wraith’s words would’ve done the job just as well. 

He knows that the Reaper is right. There’s no undoing what’s been done, no forgiveness from the dead. He’s heard this story before, and worse.

Jack is responsible for the deaths of uncountables. It was his mistakes that caused them, and his failure to clean up his act that left so many families without bodies, without accounts of what had happened of their lost members. 

He’s read the news reports, the tallied dead. He’s spoken at funerals and been commended and condemned for it, alike. He tried to learn their names, after the first blow, after the first realization that it was he who had caused such pain. There had been far, far too many, but he’d tried his damndest anyway. Every kid that came home in a bodybag, every kid who never had families to claim them. Those on deep cover missions who were never allowed to be claimed. Reyes’ kids.

He can’t start thinking about them- or Reyes. He can’t because once he starts, it’ll be an endless slide down and he won’t have the strength to carry on and fight these people. He won’t have the will to protect who remains.

Even now, as he stares blankly at the wisps of smoke trailing through the door to signal the Reaper’s exit, the enormity of it all threatens to suffocate him. Gabriel had been right, and he’d died for it. A weight that Jack will never get to set down.

The silence that Jack is left in after the door closes is almost suffocating. He’s not quite sure how to process that it’s  _ him _ especially that the Reaper wants to torment, that it’s not just a sadistic soldier following orders. He leans his head back against the solidity of the wall, closes his eyes behind his visor and sighs. 

That bottle of water hasn’t really soothed his headache. It barely lessened the pain and he knows that it won’t be enough to last him through a night. All it does is slosh in his empty stomach, remind him of how empty he feels. And the hollow emotion creeping into his mind doesn’t help matters, only magnifies the feeling. Hopefully, more water will come soon, and food with it.

The quiet of the room doesn’t help him with his focus or his attempts at keeping his head clear. It leaves him with just his thoughts, which are crowding in with more and more insistence. He tips his head forward and brings his hands up to catch it, massaging his fingers into his throbbing temples. His right hand- the one that he’d managed to get free of the cuff- 

aches and the action of getting free had cut open his skin. It had chafed the knuckles of his thumb enough to make them bleed, which had served as enough of a lubricant.

God, what was he going to do?

Torbjorn and Ana and Reinhardt; he’d never be able to forgive himself if they were put into danger. Like he had with Lena, he’d been keeping an eye on everyone. Not just the founding members, every former Overwatch member that he could get ahold of. A few of them had died shortly after he’d gotten ahold of them, something else that he blamed himself for. Other few had hidden away too deeply for him to put a tag on, too skittish for him to track but leaving enough of a trail for him to know they were alive. Like Jesse. 

The second that Jack starts thinking about that little cowboy, he can’t stop. He remembers when Gabriel brought the kid in, filthy and bedraggled, jumpy and tense. He’d bitten a few others on his first week, gotten into fights left and right, and Gabe didn’t seemed to have minded. In fact, it was almost like he was encouraging. At least the kid had matured in time. Being relied on and favored by his commander had done him some good, in the end, and he definitely started to pick it up after Genji had been given to him. 

Genji was easy to track. He had a, reputation, being who and what he was. He didn’t make much of an effort to hide himself either, like Jesse had. Jesse, who disappeared without a trace, without a note. Jack had never been close to the kid, never filled the role of father like Gabriel had. Ana had once described him as the uninvolved step-father of the family, the one that always tried to awkwardly make jokes whenever he was left alone with the kid and always got a birthday present, but not much else. 

She wasn’t very far off of the mark. 

Jesse had always been somewhat hostile to Jack. To anyone that wasn’t in Blackwatch, really. He’d been civil when Gabriel was around, but otherwise he subtly picked fights.

Gabe had joked it was because Jesse had a crush on him, which Jack had been very uncomfortable thinking about and had insisted was not the reality. 

The kid had gotten easier to manage once he was older. 

It was painful to remember. The empty space in Jack’s chest hardened, becoming a rock weighing against the inside of their ribs and threatening to shatter them, puncture his organs and bleed him out. He almost wishes that it would. Wishes he has the strength to tear himself to pieces so that the Reaper won’t have the satisfaction of doing it himself, so that every piece of information inside his head will be safe.

For a moment, the thought becomes something tangible in his head, a real option that he can go through with. Jack scans the room, searching for something that he would be able to kill himself quickly with. He realizes that his search is in vain almost immediately, and he knows that Talon would have anticipated something ballsy and stupidly courageous like that. That’s why they bolt the chair and the table, why they put the cameras in. Even if he just started to bash his head into the walls, they would see and be able to send someone in almost immediately to stop him. It’s a fruitless endeavor. 

The realization doesn’t disappoint Jack much. He doesn’t think that he’d be able to do it if it came to it. After the explosion, before he became Soldier: 76, he might have. He’d fallen into a dark place then, somewhere bleak and empty, as hopeless as it felt being chained in that room. Then he’d been willing and ready to just lay down and never get up again. Somehow, in his head, it wasn’t the same as a suicide if he just passively stood back and watched his body deteriorate. It wasn’t the same as actively pursuing the want, like jumping off of a bridge. 

Dark days. 

The guilt had been almost unbearable, then. Months of struggle and stealing, continuing on without a purpose. 

He had the purpose, now. He had the will to carry on, now. He had to keep his family safe. Keep those kids in Blackwatch safe, so that pieces of Reyes would carry on through them. He owed that much to Gabe. That much and more, but this was all Jack could do now that it was too late. 

A clatter draws him out of his thoughts, makes him lift his head. This time he has the sense to move slowly, so that his headache doesn’t throb and make his skull feel like it’s splitting open. The flap at the bottom of the door has been opened, and Jack just has time to see someone slide the tray in and roll a water bottle after it before the flap falls closed. 

It’s not the Reaper’s hand. There’s no shining metal spikes, no claws, just sleek black gloves that cover the skin. 

Looks like he’s not going to be getting the privilege of being hand fed. Looks like they counted on him getting his hands free.

He can see what’s on the tray, and it doesn’t look very appetizing. A lump of a food about the size of a brick, as if someone had taken handfuls of grains, vegetables, meat and blended them all, then packed it into a mound. It’s a foolish thing to hope for, but maybe it tastes better than it looks. 

That bottle looks really good, though. Mouthwateringly good. That’s what he needs, more water, but Jack doesn’t know if he has the strength to drag his way over to the door. 

He starts it out slow. Stretches out his battered arms first, which ache dully. The motion causes a stab of pain in his tense, sore shoulders, but it calms back down to a throb within seconds. Then his legs, which thankfully don’t fire up any larger pains. They’re not broken, but he doesn’t trust them to support his weight and carry him to the door. He doesn’t trust himself not to pass out the second he stands up. 

Pride isn’t something a prisoner should have. Pride isn’t something that should keep a prisoner from acting to save their own lives, but it still feels agonizingly degrading to pull himself across the cement floor to where the tray lays. Jack’s skin burns as he imagines the laughter and the taunting going on behind those cameras, behind that mirror. It’s slow going, a half-crawl half-lurch across the floor. His limbs tremble every time he puts weight on them, but thankfully none give out under him.

It’s a relief when he finally slumps down beside the tray, so heavily he almost keels over onto his side. He supports his weight with his still shackled hand and reaches with his free towards the brick of- supposed- food. 

Pieces of the brick flake off as Jack lifts it, fall in a shower of crumbs back onto the plastic tray. It’s cold under his fingers, and it has a slight moist give. He gives it a wary sniff, but can smell nothing but the traces of iron on his clothes and his own sweat. With a small sigh, he puts the thing back down and reaches for the bottle instead. 

It’s heavy and solid in his hands, stainless steel instead of plastic that he could tear and twist to pieces. Hopefully enough to sate his headache and replenish his broadstream. He untwists the lid and lifts the rim of the bottle to his lips, taking a deep drink. This stuff, he’ll be more careful to space out than the bottle that the Reaper had given him, which he’d foolishly chugged down. 

As he drinks, Jack tries to remember what he’d learned about common drugs and chemicals when he’d been in training for exactly this sort of thing. The sorts that can be dissolved into water, what kinds of tastes and traces they’ll leave behind. But his field work is far behind him, and his head is like a sieve for important things in the way that everything slips through before he can catch it. But  there seems to be no aftertaste but the metallic tang of the last bits of blood on his lips and the inside of his mouth being washed down his throat. 

One big drink, and then he stops, breathing deeply, waiting several moments. Then another drink, and another pause. He carries on like this for an amount of time that he can’t measure, but it feels like a good long while. He knows that they’re watching him.

Whether or not the water’s drugged, Jack doesn’t feel any different that he had before. Maybe they thought he was already light headed and dreary enough and they didn’t need to do anything more. Or maybe the drugs are in the food instead. 

Drinking has woken up his hunger, and he eyes the brick with more interest and less simple curiosity. He’s seen things similar to it before in documentaries and holopics of the conditions in old prisons, but not in real life. The food that Blackwatch fed- that  _ Overwatch _ fed, he corrects, reminds himself that there was no real distinction- their prisoners wasn’t unhealthy or part of any bargaining or- and this he shudders to recall- torment that they might have been doing. 

Jack never knew much about prisoners. He hadn’t even known that Overwatch  _ took _ prisoners at first. Reyes had mentioned it offhandedly to him once, after a mission in Japan, and Jack hadn’t understood what he had said. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, convinced himself that Reyes was somehow mistaken, but he could not deny the facts for long. Another brutal reminder of all the dirty work that Gabriel had been put to while he, Jack, sat pretty in front of the cameras. 

He lifts the brick again, this time with the intent to taste. Warily, he takes a nibble from the corner and gags almost immediately. The thing is tasteless, but it’s thick and powdery. A consistency that’s like chalk and a texture that’s just the same. With a significant sound and expression of disgust, Jack hastily drops the things back onto the tray and goes back to his water, deciding that he’ll have to be a lot more desperate to eat something like that. 

For a bit, his stubbornness keeps him from picking the brick back up. But his stomach aches and sloshes, empty except for all that water and blood. He needs something solid in there too, or else he won’t be able to make it. This, he knows, but doesn’t want to admit. He wants to believe that he can survive on just water even after taking the beating he had and the time since his last meal. 

Underneath his pride, the refusal to eat is more than just his obdurate personality. It’s a silent ‘fuck you’ to Talon, a message saying that he won’t eat the shit that they feed him as long as it’s as horrible as that. And beneath that aggression, there’s a notion of self-harm, the ideology that he deserves to starve for being stupid enough to be caught. Something that Ana would glower and scold at him for, but something that he cannot resist or bury. 

It’s almost half an hour before the hungry gnawing in his stomach drives him to take another nibble. This one is just as awful as the last, and the texture of the stuff on his tongue makes his skin crawl and his teeth shrivel. Jack puts the brick down again, tells himself again that he won’t eat the thing. 

The water’s a little more than half gone at that point. The headache has dulled down just the slightest bit, enough to be bearable and not be pounding right behind his eyes. Jack leans his shoulder against the wall with a sigh and glares down at the block of food. He doesn’t want to eat it, but he has to.

It’s childish, really, and he knows that. He’s just delaying the inevitable. It’s just a matter of if he’ll eat it now, or later. The outcome is still the same, but he’s fooling himself into thinking that he’s got a choice. He’s still going to eat, eventually. Eat or die, which he doubts Talon will allow. He suspects that even if he does refuse to eat, even to the point of passing out, they’ll force feed him. 

That’d be a sight. The Reaper forcing food down Jack’s throat while growling the whole time about what a stubborn bastard he is. 

Still, not eating is an option. An action of rebellion, and one of the very few that he’ll be able to make while he’s being held captive like an animal. The only downfall is that not eating will make him weaker, and he’ll continue to be weak through what the Reaper does to him, unable to fight back and sustain his body and, by extension, his mind. That’s what decides it. The knowing that if his body weakens, his mind will weaken, his willpower. With that gone, he won’t be able to keep his family safe. He won’t be able to repay his debt to Reyes, or keep his memory alive. If he doesn’t have the will to fight, then he won’t fight. He’ll given in to the Reaper and his body will break, and then he’ll open his mouth. If he’s too weak to fight back, he’ll be too weak to resist.

He has to eat. For Gabriel. For Ana. 

Swallowing a groan, Jack lifts the brick again. Grimacing and sending a glare at the nearest camera, he takes a bite. His mouth hates him for it, and his first instinct is to spit it out. His throat constricts, stomach bucks as he gags, but he forces it down. Pieces of the stuff are left on his teeth, leaving that texture and lack of taste in his mouth, cover his tongue with that dusty powder. 

With every bite, he hates Talon more. With every bite, he promises himself that he’ll hold out.

It seems like an eternity before he chokes down the last piece of the thing. Jack spends several minutes picking at his teeth, running his tongue against the inside of his mouth over and over against trying to get rid of anything that remains. It doesn’t help, so he takes another drink of water instead to try and wash the stuff down. That helps a little, but doesn’t get it all. 

At least it’s out of the way. Now he’s free to drink his water and… Well, nothing else. Just drink his water. He takes one more sip, and then decides to save the stuff. He decides that he’d better have a rest that didn’t come from being knocked out, a rest that’ll make it easier for his body to work on healing and replenishing. 

The idea of moving and curling up in a corner is slightly appealing, but he doesn’t want to waste the energy. He’ll need his strength later. He has to figure out a way to get the jump on the Reaper, to surprise him somehow and get in a few blows. Even if it just ends with those claws in his skin and with no ground gained on his side, it’ll be worth it. It’ll be a message to his captors that he’s still kicking, and an affirmation to himself that he’s still able to fight. He’s not just going to lay down and let what happens happen. 

He wonders if it’s even possible. Can a man that can disintegrate be beaten? Do physical blows have any affect on him at all? Is there a way to grind him under a heel and make him submit, the same as anyone else? Maybe all the rumors about the Reaper being undead and a souleater are true. Surprisingly, the thought doesn’t make Jack uncertain or frightened. It doesn’t change who the Reaper is, just changes the kinds of things he can be called. 

Another reason to stay by the door instead of being in a corner: if he’s fast enough, he might be able to swipe the Reaper’s legs out from under him the next time his cage is visited. 

All he has to do is stay alive and be smart enough to recover some of his strength so he can keep fighting.

 

 

There’s a routine that Jack settles into while he’s in the cell. 

Without a clock, there’s no way for him to even attempt tracking the times that the Reaper comes but he doubts that it’s a linear schedule. An assortment of random meetings that are meant to keep him guessing, with feedings always taking place after a session, never before. They don’t want him throwing up in the middle of it, apparently. 

The Reaper is more or less the same in his demeanor every time. He does not speak of the, for a lack of a better term,  _ event _ that happened between them. The sudden passionate hatred and the vowing to make Jack suffer. He doesn’t reference it, not even in an underhanded way, nor does he every lapse back into acting like he had before. He stays distant, aloof and aggressive but without making it personal. 

Eat, sleep, get beaten, sleep again, eat, sleep, get beaten. 

Jack can’t keep track of the days with no windows. He doesn’t know how long he’s been held, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been too long. There’s no way for him to measure how every time he stays unconscious whenever he’s knocked out except for how much he still hurts and how much blood he’s laying in. 

The Reaper doesn’t bring tools. He hasn’t yet, at least. He uses only his words, his fists, and his claws. The first time they had dug into Jack’s shoulder and wrenched him backwards, he couldn’t help the haggard scream that had left him. It was like someone with knives for fingers had grabbed onto him. Digging into the scar tissue on his skin, clawing through his flesh. The Reaper had enjoyed himself that day. 

There is no medic. No one who comes in afterwards to clean Jack up or give him fresh clothes. He stays in the ones that he came. His jacket is nicked and cut in a dozen different places with its collar almost hanging off. Tearing it almost seems to be a favorite trick of the Reaper’s, watching those colors flag and bend under his claws. 

No one else comes in at all, actually. No one to feed him. No one that makes sure he’s not dead after the particularly brutal match where his arm had been dislocated from his shoulder. Jack had had to set it back himself, and hated himself every time he made any noise of pain throughout the endeavor. He hated the Reaper more for his sadistic violence, hated Talon for being so ruthless. 

But he kept his silence. Not a word left his mouth that gave away his family. Not a hint, not a name, not a location. The Reaper threatened to cut off his tongue, to pluck out his eyes and pull out his spine vertebrae by vertebrae and still nothing. 

Not that it’s not hard to keep his silence. There are times when Jack was close to pleading, begging for mercy, times when he almost let something slip just to make that boot stop grinding against his ribs. It’s hard, but he keeps it up. Keeps them safe for Gabriel’s sake. 

There are quiet moments in between. Silent spans of stillness where he’s left alone in the room to boredom. Being alone is almost as bad as when he’s being tortured. Jack is left alone with his thoughts. The thoughts that haunt him with the possibilities of giving something up, the outcomes that would happen if he just let a single thing slip. Would things go better? Would he be rewarded? 

He can feel himself slipping. Even when he sits leaning against the wall, glaring at the tinted glass and hoping he’s making unnerving eye contact with whoever’s beyond it, he can feel the cracks worming their way into his head. There are so many doubts in himself, so many difficulties in not falling down a treacherous, slippery slope of thinking it easier to give in. 

He holds on to thoughts of Gabriel and Ana to get through it.

With every day that passes, he gets a little bit stronger. That’s what he tells himself, anyway. With every hated mouthful of the food they give him, he recovers from the beatings. He strengthens himself for the moment when he can strike.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to give Jack some more personality with this chapter. My beta reader pointed out to me that most of the first chapter was about Jack's surroundings and what he observed, as opposed to Gabriel's chapter which took place mostly inside his head. I hope this helped.  
> The next chapter will be a little slow like this one but the plot will ramp up soon.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I bet this comes as a surprise. I hadn't realized how long it'd been since I updated this, and my most sincere apologies to anyone that was waiting on this. I really just lost drive for a while and was distracted from other real-life things. I hope that I can carry on now.  
> Since my last update, Moira has been released and the known canon has changed quite a bit. However, I'm not going to change the plot of this story since it was originally an AU anyway that mostly followed speculated fanon. I hope that it's still enjoyable now even though a little more light has been shed on the Reaper's origins that contradicts my former theories.  
> Enjoy!

The turbulence jostles Gabriel out of his brief, rare bout of rest.

His head snaps up, disoriented, and his claws dig into the vinyl seats beside him, the empty spaces that are always left for him in case he starts to smoke. That stuff isn’t good to breathe. A wisp leaks beneath his mask as he breathes a quiet snarl, trying to chase off the lingering images swimming in his head. 

For a moment, the stuff doesn’t burn on the way out. It’s like the smoke of a cigarillo instead, but it goes back to normal when he sucks in a returning breath. 

Across the transport, on the other side of the trail of red lights on the floor, the Talon agents stir. One of them flinches slightly at the smoke- he’s never been on a mission with the Reaper before. The rest looked bored with their dangerous and strange problem-child. 

Some would say it was an honor to be set in with the Reaper, to fight by his side, but others would say that it was something feared, not anticipated. There’s a mix of both in this small group of agents, but Gabe is apathetic. It’s a bother for him to have to worry about the others, have to make sure they’re not in any danger and take care of them. 

Not that it’s his job to do that. Talon is supposed to take care of itself. No friendships on the battlefield. It’s an innate feeling, a deep set instinct that he can’t resist. It’s his responsibility, and it’s a responsibility that’s annoying as shit. They get in the way. They panic if anything goes wrong. They’re visibly uncomfortable with the state that Gabe leaves his victims in. It’s annoying being around them.

He slowly pulls his claws free of the seats and flexes his fingers, giving both hands a small shake. He can’t remember the dream. The memories are already fleeting, disappearing and fading back into his subconscious.

The transport rocks again, buffeted by the wind outside. Gabriel sways with the motion instead of trying to fight against it. He’s not worried about the jet going down, but he checks his straps just in case. Tugging on the polyester webbing to make sure it’s secure and that it won’t give and spill him if the craft does go down. The movement prompts several of the Talon agents to do the same, mistaking the action for anxiety. 

“Ten minutes away from the base,” The pilot calls from over her shoulder from up in the cockpit, speaking above the hiss of filtered air in the transport. “We’ll circle twice before landing, as usual. Hang on; it’s starting to get windy.”

The flight back is from the first Talon mission that Gabriel’s been sent on-  _ allowed _ on- since Morrison’s capture. Something small and quick that wouldn’t keep him away for too long; a scouting mission to inspect Helix’s maximum security prison and their schedule of guards. A tedious and boring task that, in Gabriel’s opinion, didn’t require more than two or three men, let alone the five that had accompanied him. He had a sneaking suspicion that there were only so many to make sure that he didn’t sneak off to add a little excitement to what was otherwise an extremely boring trip.

One of the agents tug nervously on their straps again and another snorts in amusement at the first’s worry. The second leans forward, resting padded elbows on his knees and looking across the empty space to the Reaper. Gabe straightens up in his seat and rolls his shoulders backwards once, head tipping expectantly to the side. He’s used to the stares and the whispers around the corners, but this time it looks as if there’s a comment to be made to his face. 

There’s a brief moment of hesitance from the agent, a beat of intimidation, and then he speaks. 

“I’ve been watching what you’ve been doing with 76,” He informs. Gabriel just stares, waiting for something that warrants an actual response.

This seems to unnerve the agent, who loses his tongue for a moment before he continues. 

“I’m a fan, I mean. I think you’re doing a good job breaking him out the way you are. Fun as hell to watch and see him squeal like that,” There’s another pause in which he glances to the one sitting next to him, as if seeking comfort from his ranks. “Fun, like I said, but I don’t think it’s quite doing the job.”

Gabriel blinks behind his mask. He hadn’t expect that, not so soon. It’s barely over a week since Morrison was brought it and there are complaints already? He straightens his neck out, looks at the agent straight on. There’s the chance that this is a challenge, as much of one that can be made to something like the Reaper.

A taunt; an insinuation that he’s losing his touch. 

“I don’t mean any offense,” The young man says quickly, lifting up both hands as if to ward off any aggressive response. “I know you’re having your fun in there and God knows that he deserves every bit of what you’re giving him. I just mean that, well, you’re not really getting anything out of him.”

Gabe blinks again and breathes out a slow wisp of smoke. He does so with a purpose; he knows that the Talon agents hate being reminded of his inhumanness, being reminded that he is in no way like them. It’s unnerving, looking at something that looks like a man and then watching it exhibit some unearthly trait. The one speaking to him shifts again, but doesn’t have the brains to stay silent.

“I know that it hasn’t been that long since we brought him in and I’m sure he’s a tough nut to crack, but- I mean, you see what I’m talking about, right? All that and not even-”

“Lay off of it, Cavell,” Another of them hisses from the end of the row of seats. This one still wears their helmet: the smooth and domed skull-like mask that distorts their voice with a slight static. The gleaming red eyes are trained on the one that had spoken to Gabriel- Cavell, apparently- and it’s easy to imagine a silencing glower.

“Well I ain’t wrong, am I?” Cavell demands, lifting up a hand in exasperation and then letting it fall back onto his leg. “Nothing out of him. Nothing but him squealing and cursing. No location, no name, nothing. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to be a little disappointed.” 

The transport rocks again before anyone can answer him. The grunts grip their straps, clinging like it would save them if the whole jet went down. When it stills, Cavell leans back in his seats and huffs, rubbing his neck and glowering at the floor. It’s Gabriel’s turn to lean forward now, arching slowly towards the agent. 

“If you think that you could do a better job than me, then you can take it up with one of the executives,” He says, soft and slowly and deliberate. The leaders of Talon are not to be trifled with, and they certainly wouldn’t like to hear some young thug telling them that he disagrees with their decisions. “I could also just cut your tongue out. That way, no one would have to hear about your complaining again. Is that what you want?”

He pauses politely to wait for a response and watches in silent glee as Cavell’s face takes on a horrified expression that he tries very poorly to mask. Disappointingly, the boy has the good sense to not speak again and make an even larger fool of himself, so Gabriel sinks back in his seat and hums.

“I didn’t think so. So keep your mouth shut and let me do my job, and I won’t cripple you so much you can’t do yours.”

That doesn’t get a response either, but it wasn’t supposed to. Cavell obediently keeps his mouth shut and no one else dares to speak to Gabriel as the transport nears base. 

That taste returns to Gabe’s mouth as another harsh gust of turbulence rocks the jet, tossing them up and then down in sudden, lurching movement. A thick, woody taste with a hint of spice that leaves a tingle on his tongue. Is it something in the air?

A sudden surge of  déjà  vu grips Gabe, sends him momentarily spinning through another pitch of turbulence. He shakes his head and wets his lips, tries to clear the feeling and chase the taste away. 

He’s just hungry, is all. He needs to eat and get his strength back, keep up his energy. Then he can go fuck off somewhere; sit up on the roof or maybe go watch Jack through the glass to see what he’s been up to. The soldier has been more quiet lately, less responsive and less aggressive, and Gabe’s almost worried that the man’s going to start starving himself.

He holds onto the buckle of his strap as the nose of the transport dips downwards. He closes his eyes as he feels them descend, gliding down through the air like a waterfowl about to touchdown on a pond. There’s slight lurch as they touch down, a bob as they bounce off the tarmac, and then a jolt as the brakes engage. Someone sighs in relief. The theatrics of this lot. 

Gabriel doesn’t move to rise until the craft has coasted to a complete stop. Two of the grunts have unbuckled themselves and are standing by then, holding onto safety straps hanging from the ceiling to keep themselves from falling over. It’s a minute or two before the rolling slows to its conclusion, and once it does the pilot flips the switch for the bay doors. With a mechanical roar, they start to open, the floor slowly levering its way down. It starts as a crack of bright, natural light, and it widens to a gaping hole as the door settles itself to the tarmac to serve as a ramp. 

Gabe unbuckles himself and heaves himself upwards with a quiet sound of discomfort. He’s gone a bit numb from sitting and his unusual bout of dozing, and the nerves in his legs prickle with protest as they take his weight. Ignoring them and giving himself no time to wake up his stiff body, he stalks past the grunts and down the lowered door to the outside. 

It’s only a little after midday, but the sky is dim. The clouds hang in a thin blanket in the sky, stretched over the base and the bland plains and hills that surround it. Not heavy enough to rain any harder than a light drizzle, but enough to filter the sunlight to be gray and dreary. 

This is the sort of weather Gabriel favors. The darker, drab stuff. Bright sunlight makes him feel indescribably uncomfortable and smoke more often. The days where it’s only heat and brightness and that muggy feeling of humidity are torture. 

He lingers on the stretch of black tarmac, eyeing the clouds and trying to gage a guess of if they’ll move on or bunch together and rain sometime later. It’s hard to tell now, but he hopes that it rains. It hasn’t rained in awhile, and the environment surrounding the base is suffering. 

The waist high grasses are dry and brittle; they crackle and tear from their bases when the wind gusts any harder than a light breeze. The ground is dry with cracks and sometimes it gives out under enough weight, crumbling to plumes of dust. 

The base stands as the lone building in the hills, perched atop the summit of one. Outer walls ring around the place, topped with loops of barbed wire with guard towers every thirty feet or so. The base itself is broad and gray with dark tinted windows, larger underground than it is above. The single closest structure is a radio tower two miles away, standing alone in the plains. A lonely, wide dirt road cuts through the fields, runs by the base, and then continues on through the hills.

Talon is very careful to keep itself secret. The base is miles away from the nearest city and drones keep watch on the surrounding territory to make sure no one is coming near. Activity that goes on outside, like a jet landing or a transport bringing in supplies, is carried out extremely carefully. It’s always made sure beforehand that no one is around to see first and everything is timed down to the seconds. 

All the caution is a little tedious in Gabriel’s opinion. If someone were to come along and see the base from a distance, they’d think it was some abandoned prison or an old military base and leave it alone. If they were stupid enough to try and come closer, he could just kill them. It’s a sheer landscape besides, and everything can be seen coming- and going. 

He starts to stalk across the asphalt without waiting for the others to join him. He moves towards the chain link gates that separate the courtyard from the runway, which start to slide open as he approaches, them, creaking and groaning as they go. All that he wants to do is get inside and raid the kitchen again, eat everything within sight. He ate before going out on the mission, but it’s been a handful of boring, slow hours and now he’s tired. 

As he comes inside of the gate, the asphalt changes to concrete; a broad path leading right up to the base and circling around it as well to reach all doors. Waiting for at the double steel doors at the end of the path, standing straight as a ruler with her hands hanging limply at her side, is Amélie. 

She’s not in her combat outfit, nor does she have her rifle or headgear. Her hair is down, tucked behind both ears and flowing down her back in a black curtain. She has a plain black shirt on with long sleeves that hides the tattoo on her forearm.

Gabriel hesitates at the sight of her, fearing for a moment that something has gone wrong with Morrison, but her mouth gives the slightest twitch upwards as he stalks his way up the path and he knows there is nothing to worry about. 

“ _ Querida _ ,” He rasps as he comes level with her and stops. He’s got a few inches on her so she has to tilt her head up slightly to look at him, and she does so with a hint of wry humor.

“ _ Chère _ ,” Amélie responds evenly. “I trust that the mission went well.”

“As well as it could’ve been. It wasn’t my speed, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.”

She lifts a hand, humming a quiet laugh into the back of it. 

“I know. I can’t say I agree with you, but I know how you are,” She says, voice soft and slow. He’s all action and destruction, while she’s all about lying in wait for her prey to crawl across her path. She would’ve been better for the mission than him. “If you don’t mind keeping things slow for a little while longer, I have some time to myself and I would like to spend it with you. Unless you have to go and torment your  _ mouchard _ ,” She lets the sentence trail off and arches a thin brow questioningly. 

Gabriel considers the option, eyes Amélie’s mutedly hopeful expression. It’s been over a week since they were able to be alone and enjoy each other’s company; it’s an incredibly tempting offer. He doesn’t know when he’ll be needed for Jack again, and he doesn’t know the next time that he’ll be able to spend time with her. He needs food still, he knows that, but he’s not even aching yet. Not terribly, anyway. He has the time. He can stay with Amélie for a little while and then eat before he’s needed. If Talon had wanted him straight away, there would have been someone waiting for him to tell him that. 

He can hear the Talon agents coming up the path behind him and in his eagerness to get away from them, he nods. Amélie has an ever poorer relationship with the other agents than he does, and he doesn’t want to subject her to their eyes or comments. 

“I have the time. I wouldn’t mind spending it with you,” He grumbles as he moves past Amélie to head inside. She turns to follow him at once and hums quietly again, crossing her arms loosely. 

The Reaper heaves the doors open and stalks inside of the dimly lit base and Amélie’s heels clack on the floor behind him. He moves swiftly, not giving the others a chance to catch up to the two of them, and veers sharply down one hall and then the other. Amélie keeps pace just behind him, letting him lead the way to the dorms and to the door that guards her room. 

They don’t speak as they walk. They save that for when they’re alone and there won’t be the risk of someone around the corner listening in. 

It doesn’t take long to reach Amélie’s room. It’s at the end of a hall of doors, each one of them an entrance to personal quarters, and there’s nothing special or eye catching that sets it apart from the rest save for the difference in the numbering on the label beside the doorway trim. The differences lie on the inside. For one thing, it’s one of the only rooms that has a window to the outside, but it’s too far up the wall to actually see much out of it except the sky.

Gabe stops when he reaches it and looks expectantly to Amélie. Even he’s been in the room countless times before, he wouldn’t assume he could enter without her permission, without her lead. They may be closer with one another than they are with anyone else in the base, but the relationship they share is still a lighthearted one of work acquaintances.

Amélie is used to this habit. She moves past him, tilts the handle, and pushes the door inwards. She disappears inside without turning on the lights, and Gabriel followers her. 

Once he’s inside, the mask comes off. Even with how immediately vulnerable it leaves him feeling, it feels equally ridiculous to continue wearing it behind closed doors and around Amélie. She knows what he looks like beneath it. There’s nothing to hide from her. He turns over the alabaster in his talons, then turns it into a puff of smoke. 

Amélie turns on one of her lamps to illuminate the room. She, like Gabe, has an aversion to direct and bright lights. If she could’ve, she would have taken out the bulbs from the overhead light. Since the fixture is bolted into place and the ceiling is too tall for her to reach, she cannot, and instead she has adorned the room with four lamps near each corner. The window she usually keeps drawn with heavy black curtain, but today, since it’s gray outside, she moves across the room to pull them open. The weak light breaks through the dimness on the room, but does not warm the cold atmosphere.

The room is small, but it’s much more pandered to Amélie’s aesthetic and personality than Gabe’s is. The floor is a gray carpet and the walls are painted a deep, midnight blue. Her single bed is nestled in the corner beneath her window, lamp resting on the nightstand beside it. A bookshelf sits near the bed on the adjacent wall just outside the reach of the window, but it’s only half full with real books- whatever Amélie has managed to swipe and smuggle into her room. The rest is documents and papers of missions. There’s a desk at the foot of her bed, and a black couch settled in the center of the room facing the wall with a low coffee table in front of it. Only those few objects of furniture take up nearly all the space in the room; there’s only just enough space to walk around and between each. 

The lamp that Amélie had turned on was the one on the coffee table, and, opposed to the daylight wisping in through the window, the lamp’s light is warm. It’s a beacon guiding Gabriel nearer, and he doesn’t resist. Sinking down into the taut fabric of the couch and drawings his hands into his lap as he watches the sniper adjust the curtains and then move back across the room to join him, sitting at the opposite end. She pulls her legs up onto the couch with her, knees up with both arms wrapped around her legs.

She doesn’t stare. She and Gabe both watch the light in comfortable silence, tracing the illuminated paths of dust particles in the air bob and weave above the lamp. They sit like that for several moments, enjoying each other’s company. Gabriel pushes back his hood during this, runs his claws through the short mess of curls atop his scalp. Takes deep, slow breaths that exhale only the smallest bits of smoke. 

These quiet times are a blessing. For these rare moments, it’s alright to ache and to forget about everything else. It’s alright that he’s not doing anything useful and that he hasn’t eaten yet. It seems like everything will fall into place and it’ll all turn out okay, because they’re sitting there together, hating together, aching together.

Amélie is the one to break the silence.

“I visited his grave over the winter.”

There’s no need for Gabriel to ask who she means. There’s no one else’s grave that she could visit except for her ex-husband’s. He doesn’t need to ask who, and he doesn’t know if he should ask why, or if she would have an answer for him even if he did. He nods in acknowledgement and begins to shimmy off his gloves, peeling the leather out from beneath his vambraces. 

“What does it say on the epitaph?” 

“Under his name, it says: ‘An extraordinary man who fought like no other for the survival of humankind; a friend who could be counted on; a fantastic husband’. It’s written in French first, and then in English below it.”

Gabe nods again and works off his other glove. He flexes his scarred hands and inspects his chipped, black fingernails with false interest. Amélie had offered to paint them black a bit ago, and it’s only lasted this long because he hardly ever has his hands exposed for the paint to get chipped. He’s not sure what to say. He didn’t know Gerard, knows nothing of the man except that he’s another one off the list of Overwatch members to kill and that Amélie was the one to put him down. He had been making trouble for Talon, so he’d been taken care of. Simple as that.

“That sounds very noble,” He grunts, and Amélie moves her head a slow, single nod. 

She looks away from the lamp and the warm glow it gives, turning her head to face Gabriel. He curls one hand into a fist and nestles it in the palm of the other, pushing to crack his knuckles. 

“I heard about what happened with Jack. How close you got to him.”

For a moment, there is panic. Adrenaline rises in the back of Gabriel’s throat before he realizes that Amélie is not talking about the relationship he’d had with the former Strike Commander. She’s talking about how personal it had gotten in the cell, how intense he’d gotten that second visit. He swallows the rise of anxiety, pulls his nails out of his skin and watches the half-moon indents fade. 

There had been no other close calls after that, Gabe had made sure. He had kept his distance from Jack and done everything within his power to make himself emotionally reserved in his torment as possible. There was no need to let Jack see how much he got to Gabe; there was nothing to be gained from it, only lost. 

Thankfully, no one had mentioned the little incident since it had happened, and he’d almost allowed himself to hope there would be no mention. He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to acknowledge how close he’d come to dropping a hint to his identity or how ever since that close call he’s been experiencing strange feelings in the middle of the night and memories have been trying to claw their way to his mind like broken pieces of glass gluing themselves back together.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“Is there something wrong, Gabriel?” Amélie prompts after a moment of silence. “Are you not fit to see him?”

This is unlike her. If one of them doesn’t want to talk about something, they don’t. They don’t press or try to come at the topic in some underhanded way. Has someone put her up to this, or is she just worried for him? Gabe’s brow furrows and he frowns down at his patchy knuckles, trying to work out what’s safe to say and what isn’t.

Should he explain the troubling feelings that fill him whenever he tries to think of Jack, whenever he sees that anguished look on the man’s face when the Reaper asks him for a name? He doesn’t know why Jack is so set on protecting them all, why he’s so convinced that they deserve his protection after what they’ve all done. He doesn’t know why he feels so indignant about Jack’s foolhardy protective nature either; doesn’t know why he wants to explain all the reasons they should all be hated and why Gabe has the right to hunt them down. 

“I can handle him,” He says, gruff and leaving no room for pity. Amélie does not object to his declaration, but continues to watch him. 

Her gaze makes him uncomfortable for the first time. He can feel it boring into him, searching. 

“Seeing him reminds me of other things,” Gabriel says, hunching his shoulders with eyes still on his hands. Amélie lowers her legs and tucks them beneath her as he continues, nestles her hands in her lap. “It makes me remember that I didn’t used to be, this thing. I used to be alive.”

His lip curls as he speaks, baring the corners of his sharpened teeth. Amélie blinks at him, slowly, as if confused, and he doesn’t blame her. He’s always remembering, and she hardly remembers anything if at all. It’s what fuels him, the rage of knowing that he had used to be a man and that it was taken from him by Overwatch. He doesn’t know how else to word the cavernously empty sense of longing that opens in his chest.

“He makes me miss it,” He says, soft and angry and accusatory. 

“Being alive,” Amélie responds in a flat statement, a confirmation instead of a question, but Gabriel nods anyway. She nods, as if the knowledge satisfies her, and pulls herself across the couch closer to the Gabe.

“It was just a slip,” He begins, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders, curling his fists again. On the defensive. 

“I know,” She tells him before he can defend himself further. “A mistake. One that you could afford to make. They’re not angry with you.”

A twinge of relief pinches at Gabriel’s gut, but he doesn’t know why. Talon hasn’t ever punished him before. They’ve had no reason to. And even if they wanted, they couldn’t. He’s indestructible.

Amélie’s slender hand folds over both of his, gentle and cold. The first time she’d touched him, so long ago now, he’d flinched back in shock from the chill, but he’s used to it now. Anticipates it. 

“They can take it away,” She whispers to him. Gabriel closes his eyes, shudders. “All you have to do is ask, and they’ll take it away. You’ll be yourself again, and you can carry on the job without having to worry about it.”

He knows that she’s right. She’s spoken before about how little she feels, how she has nothing but the occasional adrenaline rush, like how Gabriel himself claims to feel nothing but rage. He knows that he’s a liar, but he’s uncertain of her. Amélie is so composed, so refined in her nature and what’s left of her personality that it’s impossible to tell.

Is she broken like him? Something that was made with not all the pieces and was left unfinished, suffering for the lack of her creator’s attention to detail?

Her touch lingers for a moment, long enough to give a squeeze that he takes as reassuring, and then she pulls away. She goes back to her corner of the couch and gives him his space. The tension that had coiled into his muscles when she had pulled herself over to him soothes and he sags against the back of the couch with a quiet huff. Amélie goes back to watching the lamp, and Gabriel stares at the wall, trying to sort out if he should take her advice. 

It’s an option, at the very least. Fessing up about the dangerous things he’d been feeling to Talon could be detrimental to his want- his need- to be the one to handle Jack. They could take the opportunity away from him if they wanted, decide that he couldn’t be trusted with the responsibility and keep him far away from the holding cell. He doesn’t want that to happen. 

That’s the worst outcome. The best is that they take his coming forward as a gesture of good faith. The best is that they take it away and let him continue his work while keeping an eye on him, checking in to see if he returned to normal and had stopped yearning. 

While Gabriel is mulling over what exactly he’s supposed to do with himself, the hungry ache in him sharpens. He pushes the pain to the back of his mind, tries to numb it out while he’s thinking. Something shimmers in the back of his mind, iridescent and fragile as a soap bubble. He’s wary of reaching for it, wary of the sudden burst of senses that he could get from it. It’s like it’s something tangible, something that he could reach out, grab, and yank to his chest if he just moved, but he’s too coward to. 

Gabriel is no stranger to repressed memories and how horrific they usually are. The things he does remember are gruesome enough as is; he can’t imagine how much something his subconscious is coughing up must be. Something more agonizing than the sensation of being dragged back from death and forced into a body that was rotting, decaying, a body that was half torn to pieces and having oxygen forced into his lungs. The single most invasive feeling in his life. What could be worse than that?

“ _ Chère _ ,” Amélie breathes, dragging Gabriel out of his growing agitation, the ebbing memories of the doctor. 

He opens eyes that he didn’t realize that he’d closed and slowly breathes out through his teeth. He takes in his fingers digging into the cushions and the smoke wreathing off of his skin, leaching out under his cloak and trailing off his hair. It hurts him, burns him from the inside out, and the air is heavy with the potent stench of death. Amélie wrinkles her nose but does not cover it. She is used to this smell, like he is used to her lowered temperature. The hunger pains have grown, and his hands shake with fatigue as he loosens their grip from the couch. 

“You need to go eat. I’ll be fine here. If you have the time once you’re done, you can come back and sit with me more until one of us is needed,” Amélie tells him, her tone leaving no room for argument. As if he would have tried to disobey her. 

“If I have the time,” He rasps, even just those few words raking at his throat like sandpaper. 

Slowly, Gabriel heaves himself off of the couch, holding his gloves in one hand. He staggers for a moment, weight swaying, but he rights himself within a moment and Amélie does not move to help him. She just watches as he steadies and then moves slowly for the door. He pulls it open and slinks out into the hall without looking back to her and the small, comfortable space that is her room. 

After he pulls the door closed behind him, he stays in the hallway for a moment, trying to collect his bearings. He’s still smoking, but not as badly as he’d been a moment before now that he’s calmer and more focused. After taking his short breather, the Reaper pushes off of the well and begins to make his way towards the nearest kitchen. He needs to eat soon or else he’ll start to smoke worse, and then he’ll start to come apart. A ghastly experience for himself and for anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby to watch. 

He doesn’t bother to summon back his mask since he’s just going to eat, and luckily he runs into no one on his way so no one comes to stare at him. He’s tempted, as he lurches slowly along with one shoulder bumping the wall, to wraith just for the sake of moving faster, but he knows that doing that will just make him weaker and cost more energy. Soon he’ll be able to eat, and then he can go relax with Amélie again. 

Just as he reaches the doorway of the kitchen, his earpiece crackles. Gabriel stops, blinking in surprise. The feeling quickly gives way to alarm as a voice cuts through the feed. 

“You’re to see 76 in his cell immediately. He’s been awake for hours and he hasn’t done anything but stare at the door, waiting for you.”

The voice stops, but Gabriel doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. He needs to eat, but Talon wants him to see Morrison again. If he tells them that he’s not ready, that his lack of energy is keeping him away, they’ll blame him for his own lack of foresight for not eating the second that he landed.

For a moment, he doesn’t move. He stays in the doorway, one hand resting on the trimming. 

“Immediately, Reyes.”

With a harsh growl, he wrenches himself around and stalks his way back down the hall, away from the kitchen and away from the food. He has only himself to blame and he knows it. He’ll just have to make the session a quick one, keep it together until he can knock Morrison out, then go eat all he can.


	5. Chapter 5

Jack is waiting for the Reaper to come back.

Sitting on the floor, legs half bent with his arms propped up on the peaks of his knees, hands hanging limply downwards. He’s leaning his back against one of the legs of the immovable table, watching the door. 

The Reaper hasn’t returned since Jack woke up what must be going on two hours ago. Jack has no idea what time of day it is, but he doubts that nighttime hours would keep the Reaper from coming to torment him. He doubts if the wraith even sleeps.

He hadn’t expected to be visited right after he woke up. Now that they’ve fallen into some sort of rhythm, he knows not to expect that. The Reaper doesn’t want Jack to be drowsy, half-awake and without his wits. He wants a fight, a bit of a tussle. He doesn’t seem to be very satisfied when Jack lays unresponsive and yielding under those claws, but Jack doesn’t care much for what the wraith likes and doesn’t like. He doesn’t hold the creature’s tastes in very high regard, it’s just one of the things he’s noticed and filed away in his mind. 

There’s still been no sign of any human-like qualities like there had been that one fierce moment. Jack has watched for one, even struggled to get one- asking once or twice what the Reaper’s family would think of him if they could see him- but had failed to get reaction. No roughening of blows, no sudden excess of smoke, no snarl. Nothing to suggest that Jack’s words were even being heard. 

It was infuriating and disheartening at the same time. He had been hoping to weasel some sort of emotion out of the Reaper. Jack know it’s foolish to hope that the wraith would turn on Talon and start helping him instead, but he had been hoping nonetheless. It was in his nature, in that savior complex that Ana always used to talk about. He doesn’t expect the Reaper to suddenly turn good and break Jack out of the holding cell. As if good can even still be used to describe the ‘side’ that Jack was on. He hasn’t been sure for a good while now. But he wants to find something human under that cloak and mask. He wants to find something that’ll tell him that the thing torturing him is still human, not some mindless mercenary that came into being because of Jack’s own mistakes. 

He pities the Reaper, in a way. He knows what it’s like to lose one’s family, and he can’t imagine the events that took place to make the Reaper the way that he is. 

He still hasn’t altogether figured out how that smoke and soul-eating thing works. He figures the first is some sort of prosthetic and the second is still just rumors; he still hasn’t seen or felt any proof of the latter. 

Jack winces as a spark runs across the ports on the left side of his visor, snapping a crackle that seems so much louder in the silence. A few more pixels wink in and out erratically, fluttering black and white speckles across his mechanical vision. Huffing out a curse, he lifts a hand and presses his fingers against the side of the visor, squeezing and pinching to try and get the wires to align properly. 

The motion stirs a memory of his childhood; pulling and twisting the cord of a pair of earbuds to try and get music to play right. But the situation he’s in right now is much more dire than having nothing to drown out the loud buzzing of the cicadas; if the visor is damaged any more than he’s blind for good and there won’t be much of anything that he’ll be able to do. 

There are no more sparks, but a fizzing, crackling sounds starts up in his ear. He yanks his hand away and closes his eyes out of habit, flinching again, but no static makes painful contact. When he opens his eyes again, the sputtering pixels have gone back to giving a red overlay to his surroundings and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief. 

He’s been regaining his strength. Eating more and struggling less, but he dares do nothing more because he knows the cameras will be watching and anything he does to prepare his body for a fight will be noticed and most certainly stopped. He can store his energy but if he’s blind there’s nothing he’ll be able to do but flail uselessly around while the Reaper circles him just out of reach, laughing. 

In all honesty, he doesn’t know why his visor hasn’t already been taken from him. He hopes that it’s because the Reaper hasn’t told- won’t tell- but he can’t decide on a motive behind not telling. Keeping a little fight in your captive isn’t worth the obvious better option of having them helpless and stumbling like a newborn fawn, is it? 

Maybe to the Reaper it is. He’s strange. That’s the only thing that Jack is completely certain of: the wraith is like no one he’s ever encountered before.

Jack heaves a sigh, lets one leg fall flat against the concrete floor as he lifts the arm resting on it to rub at his jaw. He’d feared that it’d been dislocated a session or two ago when moving it had elicited a grinding noise about where it connected to his cheekbones. The grinding sensation had faded by the next time he’d woken up, but he was still wary of some internal injury that had healed wrong. 

His patience is waning. There’s only so long that he can sit there and wait for the Reaper to turn up, for Talon to send him in. There’s only so long that he can be alone with his thoughts before he’ll just try to go back to sleep. 

He drags his palm over his face with a quiet groan and lifts his head to glower at one of the cameras. He imagines that whoever’s watching the cameras gets bored too, and wonders if they have a book or a holoscreen to keep them occupied when there’s nothing of interest happening. He imagines that during especially boring stretches of time, like this one, that the camera operator spins the camera around and around in circles. 

“Tell them to hurry it up, will you?” Halfway through the sentence Jack regrets opening his mouth and almost shuts it in the middle of a word. The last thing he needs is for Talon to grow suspicious and think that he has a reason to look forward to the next session.

The camera, of course, does not respond to him, and there’s no sound from behind the darkened one-way mirror or any boots outside. No change in the room except for his marveling at his own stupidity to speak. 

With a sigh, he lets his other leg fall as well and stretches the muscles in both, finding an appreciation in the soothing cramps and waking up the sleeping muscles. He stretched his arms out as well, linking his fingers together and pushing his palms outwards. He grunts as a joint in his left shoulder pops and pulls his arms back in, starts to pull off his gloves. 

He’d managed to get his other hand free of the heavy cuff after the Reaper had grabbed onto the thing and used it like a leash attached to his wrist, yanking Jack around by it. It’d wrenched his muscles something awful and the cuff had almost slipped off just from that, but the Reaper had stopped before it had. The cuff itself now lies in one of the corners, dried smears of blood crusted around the inside of where it had dug into his thumb. 

The cuffs on his ankles are still there, though. Jack knows he could probably pry them off if he wanted to, but he’s not about to waste the energy to tear the plastic just so the flimsy chain doesn’t jangle whenever he moves. 

He drops his red gloves into his lap and starts to comb his fingers across his close shaven scalp, scraping out the encrusted patches of blood. Scarlet dust falls down at the side of his head, barely visible in his peripherals. His hair was already a mess, but now he knows it’s worse. Flattened to his scalp in some places by sweat and blood, sticking up in dried crusts in others. 

Getting out of the cell sounds good and all, but Jack doesn’t know if he wants the freedom or just a long shower more. Both are pretty appetizing. 

Jack jumps when he hears the door start to grind open and nearly pulls out a handful of his own hair with how quickly he yanks his hands down. He stares stupidly for a moment as the heavy door is pushed inwards that taunting half-inch and only snaps back when he sees the smoke starting to waft through it. He fumbles with his gloves, yanking them back onto both hands and wincing when he scrapes the still raw chafe mark on his right thumb. 

His little snap at the camera was almost perfectly timed, and he wonders if Talon actually passed the message along or if it was just some twist of fate. 

Jack remains seated on the floor as the Reaper starts to form in front of him but his body tenses with anxiety and apprehension. Has Talon found out? Have they somehow figured out his meager attempts of trying to find an underhanded, secret of fighting back against them and that’s why the Reaper is here now?

His anxieties stop short when the Reaper finishes his reformation. Jack might be a bit thick, and he’s been the first to admit to that fault, but he can see that there’s something off. Smoke keeps wreathing off of the creature, trickling slowly upwards like half a dozen anti-gravity rivers. He’s been watching enough, paying attention enough to know that that only happens when the Reaper is particularly moody. He’s formed this shaky half-hypothesis in his head about the amount of focus and attention it takes to change to smoke or stay stable, how it gets harder to stay as one or the other when the Reaper gets worked up.

Knowing that, he assumes straight away that the Reaper is annoyed, and he draws his legs up slightly, anticipating a lunge or a feint to make him flinch. But the Reaper does neither, and Jack’s theory goes in a completely different direction as he watches the wraith struggle not to slump forward. 

He frowns, wonders if the Reaper is fucking with him, wonders what would possibly make the mercenary look so drained. There’s a slight stumble, a near pitching forward that the wraith recovers from and quickly covers up. He straightens, back to his normal posture, but the smoke is still coming. Jack still saw.

His thoughts fly at a mile a minute as the Reaper stalks towards him, and he takes in every detail of the man’s gait. He’s hyper focused, trying to figure out if it’s a ruse or if it was something that the Reaper let slip. There’s a heaviness to the wraith’s step, a resounding echo of every footfall that has never happened before. He’s always been silent before. As he nears, Jack can hear the faint rasping of breath. It’s when the Reaper reaches him and hesitates, standing over him in a manner that suggests he’s not sure what to do other than just loom for the sake of intimidating, that Jack knows that it’s real. 

Something’s happened, and it’s made the Reaper sloppy. Has he gotten in trouble with Talon? Was he in the middle of something when they called him to come play his tormentor role and he had to rush to obey? Numerous more options and ideas pop into his head but he cannot trust any of them. He watches as the Reaper slowly sinks down in front of him to kneel, watches his head bow slightly as he rasps another near-silent breath, and he knows that he can’t wait any longer. 

He doubts that he’s ready. Even in this apparently weakened state that the Reaper’s in, Jack doesn’t know if he could be able to get the upper hand quick enough, doesn’t know if he’d be able to pin down that bulk and keep it down. He doesn’t know if the adrenaline, the mad desperate scramble of a caged animal will be enough, even with his super soldier strength on top of it. All he knows is that there will not be a window like this again. Talon won’t allow it, and neither will the Reaper. This is a special case.

He has to do it. 

He has to take the chance. 

He can see the attack in his head. He can feel the muscles of his legs bracing against the floor, ready to spring forward and bring the Reaper down with his weight, but his body won’t follow the rest of the thought. He’s frozen in indecision, staring at the Reaper who stares back at him, and he wonders if the other man- the  _ creature _ under that mask- is afraid. 

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” The Reaper grinds out, full of wry humor. “Day’s got a full schedule. I’m sure you can understand.”

Do it. 

“Yeah,” Is all that Jack manages, the word coming out dry and flat, barely escaping his throat at all.

Do it. 

The Reaper huffs in that irritated way that he does and tilts his head, takes in the breath to speak again, and Jack’s body decides to react. He finds footing against the ground and surges forward so suddenly that it startles himself as well as the Reaper. The Reaper, who lets out a rather undignified squawk and reels backwards, lifting his claws to defend a blow that doesn’t come. Jack doesn’t have the focus to grab onto that cloak like he should, like he should incapacitate at least one hand before those claws find a hold. All he does is smash his weight against the Reaper’s. 

They both go down. The wraith beneath Jack and the floor beneath the wraith. Jack’s so stunned to be sprawled atop the creature that’s been shredding him for the past few weeks that he doesn’t find a hold. The Reaper snarls out smoke and Jack’s stupid enough to breathe it in. He snaps upwards as he realizes his mistake and his entire body heaves as he coughs. 

It’s so much worse than just smelling the stuff. It’s like breathing in acid fumes, like breathing in the smoke of a forest fire. It stings his nose and eyes, burns the inside of his mouth and his throat. His lungs seize and his coughs again, one hand gripping his throat, and the Reaper stays solid beneath him.

The Reaper snarls again and sinks his claws in, one into Jack’s ribs and the other into his clavicle. He bucks, boots scraping against the floor, and there’s strength behind the motion but it’s less than it should be. The Reaper is weak, but the sudden vault upwards still sends Jack tipping backwards. Jack, who’s coughing still and yelping from the pain of the claws in his skin. He flails for a second as he feels his weight tip back, feels the Reaper surging up beneath him, and he scrabbles at the rough leather before grabbing onto the wraith’s hood. 

It’s not much of a hold, but it keeps him upright as he yanks, twists up a leg to brace his boot against the Reaper’s chest and then give a solid kick. 

The Reaper is slow in reacting. Something is definitely wrong with him, but Jack can wonder and pity later. He has to do what he planned, he has to get something. He’d been hoping just to give Talon trouble, make them uncertain of their abilities to make him talk and torture him, make them more likely to kill him than carry on questioning because they’re not getting anything but him fighting back. But this, this weakened state, this slowness, is better than anything Jack could have hoped for. 

He knows what he has to do with it. He knows that he has to at least to try to go through with one of those original, desperate, scrambling thoughts. The Reaper was the last person on his list for possible hostages, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The Reaper wheezes and one of his claws comes free, smears of crimson at the tips, and it’s enough for Jack to wrench himself free of the remaining. He loses his grip on the hood in the process, and his fresh wounds sting, but it’s a pain he shoves to the back of his head, something he can worry about later. They come apart but only Jack gets his legs beneath him. The Reaper stays in his half-hunched position, wheezing out smog so thick it engulfs the ebony white of his mask. 

Jack lunges again as the Reaper reels and tries to collect his bearings. He grabs that hood again, yanks again, tries to drag the Reaper sideways to get him back on the ground, but the wraith is expecting it this time.

He goes with the motion but pulls Jack along, rolling them along the floor, sinking his claws into what remains of Jack’s jacket instead of skin. He rends the leather under those talons. There’s a timer going in Jack’s head, measuring how long their tussle has gone, how long they have until someone else interrupts and puts Jack down, how much longer he has to get the upper hand.

The Reaper has his claws but Jack can’t claw like the wraith can, can’t even fight dirty and bite into anything except that thick leather. His knee makes contact with the soft give of the Reaper’s stomach and his captor wheezes again, buckles, and Jack comes out on top. He grips one of the Reaper’s shoulders in one hand, rests the other on his chest. A precious second is used to breath, to inhale, and then he lifts that hand on the Reaper’s chest to slam it back down against the man’s ribs. The Reaper squeals that time, squeals like an animal that’s being kicked or trod on, and he lashes out like one too. 

Jack squeals himself when those claws rips through his chest, reels back again with one hand clasped to the gashes. Cut right through his shirt as cleanly as anything, and the blood is already seeping out, turning the black fabric even darker. The Reaper writhes beneath him and Jack can feel the solidity of the wraith’s body starting to melt away. He can feel the Reaper rise up, half-transformed into smoke, and grapple against him. The wraiths grabs one of Jack’s hands and smashes that mask against his nose.

Jack can taste the iron pouring into his mouth more than he feels it running down his face, hears the snap more than he feels it. Pixels flicker in and out. Hardly a sound leaves him but the blow still leaves him dazed. Then angry. His angry burns hot and heavy in his gut, and he grabs for the Reaper. He wants to grab something he can dig into as much as he can through all that leather- a neck or a raw old injury by chance- but he gets that smooth metal instead at the same time the Reaper’s claws dig into the wound on his chest and dig deeper. 

Gritting his teeth on his screams and shoving at the Reaper with his other hand, Jack wrenches. For a moment nothing happens. Everything’s at a standstill. The Reaper’s frozen; his claws stop moving and he stops writhing, even his smoke stops and seems to freeze in midair. 

Then the mask comes off with the sound of a breaking strap and Jack spills backwards off of the Reaper, gripping the alabaster skull.


	6. Chapter 6

Everything is frozen. Time stops flowing. For what seems like an eternity, Gabriel is stuck on the floor, propped up on one elbow, staring at Jack, who stares back at him, clutching the mask.

He’s imagined this moment before, when Jack found out who he was. The scene in his head had always been after Jack had been given to him by Talon to use as a toy, after all the information that was in the old soldier had been pulled out and there’d been no more use for him. Never had he imagined that it’d be like this. He’d imagined the look of horror on Jack’s face, the guilt that he’d feel, the utter disbelief. He hadn’t thought that it’d be like this- this  _ anguish _ . 

There’s little he can see of Jack’s face with that visor still on, but there’s enough for it to jar Gabe to his core. The furrowed brow, the lax, half open mouth, the way that his entire body is locked into place. 

Why isn’t there anger? Why isn’t Jack shouting, demanding, questioning? Why is there just this silence?

Jack moves. It’s slow, just the lowering of the arm that holds Gabriel’s mask, but it’s enough to startle. Gabe lurches upwards, scrambling to his feet and bracing himself for an attack. Once he’s up, Jack follows, but far slower. Dragging himself to his feet like he’s moving through quicksand and once he’s up he doesn’t move. Just stands there, staring, hands limp at his sides. A moment of movement but they’re frozen again.

Gabe feels exposed. It feels wrong, too early, too unprepared. He hadn’t been expecting it. Nothing is going like it’s planned. There’s a cocktail of emotions churning in his gut, longing and regret and fear all chewed up into a wad. The feeling overwhelms him, makes him shake even when he clenches his fists. His control has been wrenched away from him, and with it the floor under his feet.

He can see his dim reflection in the one-way mirror behind Jack. His emaciated face, his sunken eyes and his ashen, blotchy skin. The old scars cutting over the ridge of his right cheekbone and the newer, smaller ones nicking across his skin. He can see his own bared teeth, his own shaky and silent snarl. 

Seeing his reflection doesn’t help. He can see his own unsteadiness, see how weak his facade really is. His snarl does little to cover up his distress; it’s weak and tremulous and crumbling at the edges. It’s just another mask to hide what he’s really feeling. Jack will be able to see right through him. He can imagine those soulful, glassy eyes boring into him, searching for an answer.

Gabe is dimly aware of the pointed silence in his ear, the lack of orders or clamor in his earpiece. He’s aware of the time he has, how much longer he’ll get to stand there under Jack’s stare until it’ll be too late to make up a reason for it to Talon and save his own skin. He remembers why he made sure Jack didn’t know in the first place. There’s something desperate surging in him now, something that makes him feel hollow and aching. 

He has to move. He has to get out of that room and explain. He has to apologize for his own lack of foresight, make promises, do everything he can to avoid penalty or punishment. He has to get away from Jack and away from these emotions that are clawing at him but he can’t move as long as Jack doesn’t. 

The mask clatters to the ground and Gabriel jerks backwards with an audible growl, lifting his claws threateningly. His legs shake beneath him, threatening to buckle, and he remembers how exhausted he is. He had barely held his own in the brief grapple the two of them had had. His energy is draining still and he’s rapidly approaching the brink. 

He can’t let Jack see him like that. He can’t let Talon see him letting Jack see. He has to get out, but he’s frozen. There’s lead in his veins and his snarl is slipping. The stillness, the silence is unbearable.

“Gabriel?”

It’s not what he expects. There’s no anger, no accusation. Just raw disbelief and something like hope that's barely daring to rear its head. Gabe doesn’t move,  _ can’t _ move. He stands frozen, staring at Jack, and still doesn’t move even when the other man takes a shaky step towards him.

“Gabriel.”

There’s still a question in Jack’s shaking tone, but it’s more awe than anything. A trembling, uncertain relief. 

It sends Gabe spinning. Unfamiliar images slip into his head, sensations crawl across his skin and leave goosebumps behind. The scrape of broad corn leaves over his skin; the weight of Jack’s old rifle; the cold blue glower that had so often been the rebuttal to his shouting. That same look had been sent to Gabe across a room as he’d stalked by, hood up and shoulders curled, three days before Jesse had left-

Jesse.

The name stays this time. Bounces back and forth in Gabe’s head like a bomb being passed from one man to another, each trying not to be the one holding it when it went off. He tries to grasp it, tries to focus, but Jack moves again.

He steps forward and Gabriel steps back, recoils, eyes slipping down from the soldier’s face to stare instead at the floor near his feet. His snarl goes away entirely and he's left only mildly glaring.

“ _ Gabriel _ .”

It’s a sigh now, a murmur, the whisper of a prayer. Something in Gabe’s chest twitches, jerks, and he flexes his claws silently. Jack lifts one shaking hand, and begins to reach out. Then the door scrapes open.

The spell shatters. Gabriel tenses, eyes darting towards the gap, and Jack freezes. The door’s still opening, wider than it should be, and he looks back at Jack for a fraction of a second. He hesitates just long enough for Jack to register what’s happening. 

He lunges for the door at the same time that Jack lunges for him. The soldier’s arms catch him around the middle and they both go to the floor. Gabriel starts to snarl the moment he hits and bucks, trying to dislodge Jack’s grip. Claws grate across the floor, screeching against the concrete as he tries to drag himself forward, heaving through the smoke pouring out of his lungs and off of his skin. Jack’s all over him, grabbing at whatever he can reach to keep the Reaper in place, keep him in that room.

“Gabriel! Gabriel- stop!”

Hearing Jack say that name almost makes him convulse. He can’t handle it. There’s another flash; stealing into Jack’s room at three in the morning after returning from a mission, seeing the look of relief on the man’s face before being pulled down into the sheets. Gabe hisses and shoves the image away, hating it and hating Jack and hating the things he’s feeling.

The door’s half open by now, far too open, but there’s still no sound in his ear. Is it worth the risk of wraithing now, just to get away? Will he be able to reform properly if he takes the chance? The odds are against Gabriel, but he shies away from the alternative and struggling his way free physically and making his way out the door before Jack can. 

He feels one of Jack’s hands loosen, pull away in search of a better hold so he can pin the Reaper in place, and Gabe takes the opportunity. He twists, wrenches himself around to face Jack and  _ hisses _ . Smoke billows out from between his sharpened teeth, searing the inside of his throat, and Jack recoils in shock, maybe a bit of horror. Gabe brings up one leg, crunches a knee into the softness of Jack’s belly, and wriggles backwards out from underneath the wheezing man. 

Just as he’s free, Jack catches his ankle and without thinking he kicks, slamming his heel into Jack’s ribs, digging mercilessly into the claw marks he’d left on the man’s chest. That makes him let go. Jack hunches, curls up and holds his chest as he gasps for breath through the pain. Without wasting a second, Gabriel heaves himself up on his unsteady legs and bolts for the door. He nearly collapses as he goes. His legs feel like jelly; his knees are weak and he barely has the strength to keep himself up. 

He makes it out. Throwing himself through the doorway and colliding with the wall opposite it. He sags against it, gasping, scraping his claws across the metal as he tries to recover. With his eyes shut, he hears the guards heave the door shut and then the thump of Jack’s weight slam into it a second too late. 

Everything’s hurting. His muscles ache with the strain of keeping him upright and his throat feels raw. He can feel his skin beginning to bubble, feel how close it is to giving out.

He has to get away from Jack. He has to eat something. He has to stop thinking. 

One of the guards touch him, just a brushing contact on his shoulder, and Gabriel jerks away from them with a snarl. He regrets the motion immediately with how dizzy it makes him and how pain stabs into his temples. The guard snorts and doesn’t try to touch him again, instead lifting a hand to press the com in their ear. Gabe can’t make out what they’re saying. His vision is swimming. He can hardly see the swaying floor beneath him past the smog still filtering out of his panting jaws. 

He has to eat. Has to get to Amélie- she’ll know how to help. She’ll know what to do. 

He takes a single shaking step forward and then stops. It’s too much. He won’t make it. He’s going to start coming to pieces right here in the hall. Another memory sledgehammers him in the stomach and his legs give out- blue skies, a shooting range, the pride at Jesse’s skill, Ana’s approving nod,  _ “This one was worth taking in.” _

He catches himself with his hands before he hits the ground and he groans with the effort. His arms shake but he stays there, stays up. He tries to salvage even an ounce of strength and then one of the limbs starts to dissolve. Breaking away into smoke and leaving his weight on the remaining. It’s painful. It’s not like when he purposefully wraiths. This breaking apart hurts him, sends agony bolting through the nerves in his shoulder. He’s rotting away.

He coughs out a sound of pain. Hacks out a wad of sticky black substances that splatters on the floor with a hissing sound, steam wafting up from it in light trails. Drags himself forward another foot and stops again, biting back a whimper as his arm fluctuates between flesh and smoke . His skin and flesh peel off the bone, dissolving and reforming all over again. Viscera drips out past his lips, a black trail spotting on the floor beneath him. 

Another barrage of senses. This time one is calmer, but it unnerves it no less than the others. A pristine white medical room with cold, glaring lights. He stands on one side of a glass window, watching the kid- the  _ kid _ \- inside lay in the standard cot, watching the monitors hooked up to his prosthetic limbs and the armored plaiting layered over his body. Jesse stands next to him, shuffling his weight, fiddling with his gloves, uneasy and uncertain.

It leaves Gabe gasping, hacking out more viscera, slumping down on his remaining forearm. The guards are chattering, clamoring, but he can’t focus. It’s like white noise in the background. He’s not going to make it. He can feel the skin on his neck crawling, feeling pieces of his face crumble away like dust. He can feel air pass through the gap of flesh in his cheek. 

He knows he won’t make it. Not like this. He’ll come apart right there and it’ll take hours for Talon to piece him back together, hours of resources wasted on him and his stupidity, his weakness. They’ll know about him and Jack. They’ll know about his doubts. 

He lifts his head and tries to heave himself upwards in a final attempt to drag himself away, and the heel of a gun comes down on the side of his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for leaving you all at a cliffhanger yesterday! Hopefully this chapter will make up for it a little. It's short, but full of emotion. Don't expect quick updates like this, though! The next chapter will take longer than just a day to post.


	7. Chapter 7

No. 

It can’t be true. It can’t be Gabe. It  _ can’t _ be.

Jack’s hands run along the seam of the door, searching for some sort of catch, some sort of lever he can pull to get the thing open. He knows it’s fruitless, he knows that there’s no way to get the door open from the inside, but he tries anyway. He has to get through it. He has to get to Gabe. 

He feels like he’s going into shock. There’s a dry taste in his mouth and his heart has moved up to his throat and he can’t stop shaking. He can’t even feel the pain in his chest anymore over the numb disbelief. 

Gabe is dead. 

He’s been dead for almost a decade now. 

Jack saw the grave, visited it himself more than once after things had calmed down. He’d grieved. Even after all the hardship at the end, after all the bitter fights and the pointed silence of ignoring each other, he’d grieved. 

He’d felt like he would die. He’d wanted to die. 

He’d wished it’d been him instead.

There’s nothing for him to heave the door open with, but he already knew that. Jack pulls away from it, jaw clenched, trembling.

It can’t be Gabe.

The Reaper can’t be Gabe. Gabe wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t kill people like the Reaper had. He wouldn’t be the one grinding Jack under his heel and liking it while he did. It can’t be him. 

It can’t, it’s impossible in every way Jack could look at it, but it  _ had _ been Gabe. 

Emaciated with the complexion of a corpse, with cold red eyes instead of brown, but it’d been Gabe. Jack would know him anywhere. 

With a wordless cry, Jack slams his knuckles against the door, jerking them away at once with a curse as pain laces up his shoulder. Stupid. He stands there, holding his throbbing hand, glaring at the door keeping him in this hated room, feeling blood ooze out of his chest and soak into his shirt. He takes a deep breath to try and calm down the speeding race of his thoughts and heart. He takes another when the first doesn’t help, and then another, but neither of them help to calm the pounding in his ears.

It was Gabe. Gabe is alive. Alive and working for Talon, wearing the mask and hood of the Reaper.

Jack turns away from the door and staggers to where he’d dropped the mask on the floor, staring down at the sleek metal. It’s not just a skull, as he’d always assumed before. It’s an owl. It’s a barn owl.

He reaches down to lift the mask in his hands. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, why the mask is the detail he’s focusing on or why he turns it over to inspect the insides. There’s no clue on the inside, no explanation of what he saw. Nothing but a few spots of dried black fluid crusted at the edges of the metal. The substance that the Reaper oozes when he’s injured. The viscera that Jack has seen coughed up, has seen splatter onto the asphalt of a street after he riddled the Reaper with bullets. 

Riddled Gabe with bullets. 

_ God _ .

All those fights. Those cat and mouse games every time they crossed paths, the endless hide and seek. Every time Jack had escaped from an inch of his life from those claws and those shotguns. Every time they’d grappled on rooftops and inside warehouses. Every injury, every blow, every snarling taunt. It’d all been Gabe. 

He feels sick.

His knuckles hurt with the force he’s holding the mask with. They quiver, and Jack wishes that the mask would break- bend or give, anything that would give him relief. Anything that would give him an outlet.

What had Talon done? What’d they do to Gabriel to make him this? To convince him that Jack was his enemy, someone that had to be tortured? What could they possibly have done to convince him that people like Reinhardt had to be killed?

What had they done to turn him against his own children?

Part of him is waiting for everything to fall into place. Waiting for him to realize some minute detail that fits the missing piece of the puzzle, but nothing comes. There’s no explanation. 

Had he really fucked up that badly? He’d known he’d been insensitive and petty. He’d known that some of their worst fights were over the most pointless things and that he’d held grudges even when Gabe tried to make up. Was it enough to drive the man to be a murderer? 

_ More of a murderer than Overwatch had already made him? _ A small voice asks in the back of Jack’s head. He banishes the thought angrily, lifts his arm and hurls the mask against the one-way mirror. It hits the glass and bounces off, hits the ground, not a mark left on either of them. Unsatisfying. 

Jack starts to pace. Back and forth in front of the mirror, hands running through his short hair and then cupping behind his neck. His eyes close, but the image of Gabriel’s sunken face is burned into his eyelids. 

It can’t been Gabe. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t hunt people down like this. He wouldn’t turn on his kids, wouldn’t work with Talon. 

But that kind of thinking is hypocrisy. Jack knows it, he knows the terrible things that Gabriel did on Overwatch’s orders. On Jack’s own orders.

Guilt rises in his aching chest like a tide of icy water. He can taste it in the back of his throat. It’s his fault. Whatever happened to Gabe, whatever made him into the Reaper, made him look and sound like that-  _ it’s Jack’s fault _ . He hadn’t listened. He hadn’t believed Gabe’s frantic warnings of moles, of corrupt power inside of Overwatch. He’d mocked him, his partner; called him paranoid, told him he was losing his edge, threatened to report him. Jack had chosen to be blind against the signs, chosen to push away the most valuable person in his life so he could continue living in his own little bubble and continue believing he was helping people. 

“Stop that,” He hisses the words through his teeth. He has to be able to think clearly. If he lets himself slip down that looping spiral of blame, there’ll be no return. 

He stops pacing and brings his hands around to rub at his temples. It is Gabe, but there was something wrong. More than just the complete turnaround of personality and ethics. When Jack had ripped the mask free, there hadn’t been anger. Gabe had looked terrified. Why had he looked so scared?

_ Bang _ . 

Jack’s whole body snaps around towards the door. The walls are thick and the door is reinforced, but they’re not thick enough to cover the sound of a gunshot. 

They shot him. 

He’s back to the door in seconds, stumbling and tripping as he goes, and he slams both hands against it. His breath comes in panicked gulps and he tilts his head, straining, listening. 

They shot Gabe. 

That has to be it. There’s nothing else. Who else would they shoot out there? A witness? Did they want to cover up the scrap they’d had? No, that doesn’t make sense, they wouldn’t do that. 

Jack’s hands shake and he leans closer in but there’s nothing to hear but his own pounding heartbeat. Panic rises in the back of his throat and he can feel his muscles start to lock. He tells himself to stop. He clenches his jaw and stops breathing, closes his eyes and tries to bottle it all up. He can have a meltdown later, he can panic later, now he has to  _ do something _ . 

Trying to lock down only makes it worse. Breath bursts out of him in a dry, coughing sob and he starts to shake. His visions starts to go fuzzy, but it’s not to the fault of the visor. His eyes are failing to focus and he’s hanging onto his body by a tether. 

_ Stop it.  _ He mouths the words as he thinks them, as he commands himself. His weight leans against the door through his hands, feet braced like he’s about to push.  _ Stop that. You have to stay here. You have to focus.  _

Another coughing cry leaves him and he sucks the air back in greedily, panicky, lets out faster than he should and sucks back in. His anger at himself doubles over as he remembers the cameras, becomes acutely aware that they are still watching him. They’re watching this break him.

This is what gets him. Not the claws digging into his flesh or the deprivation of proper food and rest. Seeing his long lost partner alive is what makes him crumble, and he knows that now they know. Now they’ll use it against him. 

And they can use it against him, because the Reaper doesn’t die. 

He clings to that. Grabs onto that fact and anchors himself in it. Jack shuts his mouth and breathes in deep through his nose, holds it, and lets it out as slowly as he can. The exhale is shaky and quicker than he likes, so he tries again, and again. He forces himself to let go of the tension coiling in his muscles, and leans into the door instead of bracing himself against it. He lets it support him as he breathes, eyes closed, focused on the fact that he won’t be responsible for Gabriel’s death, again. Slowly, his heart stops its hammering. 

The Reaper doesn’t die. That’s just the facts. Jack has shot the wraith more times than he can count, blown chunks of that oozing viscera off of that body, but it doesn’t do any good. He reforms. He comes back. Gabe will come back. Jack’s not about to lose him all over again, not about to know that he died again because it was his fault,  _ again _ . 

He’s not going to get through the door. He’s not going to do any good standing there, trying to listen for something that he’ll never hear. He has to do something. He has to put his focus into something so he can get his head back, and then he can try to sort out what he’ll do next. 

Slowly, unwillingly, Jack forces himself away from the door. He staggers to the table in the center of the room and leans his weight against it, leans over it and props himself up on his hands. He stands there for a moment, forcing himself to still breathe deeply, and stares at his disfigured, warped reflection in the metal. Blood drips off the tip of his nose onto the table; blotches of red ink. 

There’s still the tingle of panic in his limbs and in the back of his throat, and his thoughts feel like they’re balled up in cotton- but at least he’s starting to feel pain. He’ll calm down completely while he’s tending to himself, while he methodically goes through the motions of taking care of his wounds.

There’s nothing he can do about his nose except try to stop the bleeding, but he can at least tie up the gashes on his chest. He won’t be able to sew them up or administer disinfectant, so it’ll have to be enough. He has to hope that the Reaper- Gabe- keeps his claws clean. 

Jack knows better than to hope that Talon will send someone in to fix him up properly. He figures the only reason they’d ever bring him out of that room would be if he was on his deathbed, and even then they’d knock him out first.

He shrugs off his jacket and hangs it over the back of the immovable chair, then lifts himself up to sit on the table. He won’t be able to use the jacket since it’s leather, so his shirt will have to do. He peels off the tattered remains of what used to be his shirt, and sets about ripping the holes in it wider. Jack’s hands shake as he tears strips of cloth away, but it gives him something to do other than break down in front of the cameras. 

It takes a bit of maneuvering to cover up the gashes. They aren’t deep, but they’d been clumsily dealt during the scuffle and were thus cut in sloppy, wide paths. As far as Jack can tell, there isn’t any significant damage, and he knows that if there was he’d just be shit out of luck. 

He winces at the first makeshift bandage. Tying the strip of cloth around his chest, pulling it taut, and knotting the thing at the seam of his shoulder. It’s too thin of a strip and won’t soak up much blood, and it’s uncomfortable for it to be in that position, so he huffs and unties it, tries again. This time he lays it flat across his chest and knots it just under his arm. It works better, but is still slightly uncomfortable. He knows he won’t get any better, so he deals with it. 

Other bandages get torn out of what was once his shirt. At first, he tries to rip only along the hem and the short sleeves in hope of somehow preserving something at least semi-wearable afterwards, but he submits to the inevitable after the third strip of cloth he tears free. He’ll have to settle with just wearing his tattered jacket to protect him from the cold walls and future torment. 

He misses his old coat, from back when he was Strike Commander. It’d mostly been for the show of his rank and power in controlling Overwatch, but it had been comfortable and warm. He would much rather have that than the one he has now. Gabe had teased him about the flair and drama surrounding the old one, but he’d only meant it in jest.

Jack catches himself still thinking of Gabriel as if he’s still dead. He clenches his jaw as he pulls a knot harder than he should, creating pressure to feel pain and ground himself through the sickening lurch his stomach gives. He has to not think about that. He has to not think about the body that he pictures in the hallway or the body he pictured lying in the wreckage of the Zürich base.

He has to take care of himself first. He can worry about Gabriel later. He can talk with Gabriel later. 

  
  


It’s not until Jack has completely wrapped up his chest later that he realizes he doesn’t know if Talon will let the Reaper-  _ Gabe _ \- back in to see him. 

His wounds have stopped their bleeding already, but there’s crusted trails of red running down his jaw. It itches and he scrapes it off of his chin and his lips, but doesn’t dare to touch his nose in case it just starts the stream again. The blood from his chest has soaked into the bandages already, but that just helped to stop the flow. It’s stopped now, but it still aches. It’ll heal quickly thanks to the S.E.P. but he’ll steal feel the pain.

There’s only scraps remaining of his shirt, and Jack leaves them on the table as he takes his jacket and wraps it around his shoulders. He’s too stiff and full of ache to try putting it on and risk bleeding. He settles himself uncomfortably against the far wall of the door and pulls his tattered jacket tight around himself. The adrenaline is still ebbing through him, making his leg jiggle, but he has no way to expunge it. He has nothing to do but wait for Gabriel to come back. If he even will. 

It’d be stupid of Talon to send the Reaper back in. Now that they know about them, about Jack and Gabe, they wouldn’t risk it, would they? They’re smarter than that. They’d use Gabe as some kind of leverage, some other weapon to dig into Jack’s ribs in hopes of making him talk. 

Just as he realizes that he doesn’t know if he’d be able to hold out against that, Jack’s mask fizzes again. There’s no sparks this time, no snapping pixels, but a sound like static starts up first in one ear, and then in the other. His head jerks and his eyes fly involuntarily up to the ever still and silent cameras. 

There’s a comm built into the visor, but Jack has never used it. He’s never tuned it to any communication channels, though he has used to to listen in on many. He’s tried to do that in this prison, tried to listen to any passing signals flying around the base that would help him, but he’s had no luck. He’d figured out pretty quickly that there was some sort of field nullifying his efforts, probably built into the very walls of this prison. There’s no way that they were taking that field down, so the only other option is that someone is hacking it.

But why?

The static fizzes in his ears, changes frequencies a handful of times. He starts to lift a hand towards his visor, moving slowly and hopefully unobtrusively. Hs brushes his fingers across the glass, trails his nails across the webbing cracks slowly backwards towards his ear. The static shifts again, makes a sound almost like words, and just before he can touch his earpieces the static stops and a voice breaks through. 

“ _ Aye, there we go. Que pasa, holmes? That’s a figure of speech; don’t answer it. In fact, don’t talk at all. We don’t want your babysitters catching wind of this… Transaction.” _

Jack blinks rapidly. His fingers linger on his ear pieces, settled against the metal but not pushing down to open his channel of response. He doesn’t know this voice. 

_ “Look, I know it’d probably be nice of me to tell you that I’m on your side and that I’m your friend and that everything is going to work out okay because I’m working on getting you out. Alright, well, half of that is true. The getting you out part. But not the rest.” _

Jack looks up at the cameras again. 

_ “This isn’t a trick. You’re just going to have to trust me on that one, Strike Commander.” _

His muscles coil. That was definitely a threat. She knows who he is, this woman, but he’s not exactly in the best position to pay blackmail. What does she expect from him?

_ “I can help you, but I’m not going to do that for free. You’re going to owe me something.” _

He snorts, almost laughs. He’s heard that before. ‘Scratch my back while I hold this knife to your throat, and I’ll scratch yours later’. 

_ “You’re right to be worried, but I promise that all I want is my due. And all you want is to get out. I can help you with that. I can get you out, and get Gabe out too.” _

His mind grinds to a halt. 

_ “Yeah, that got your attention,” _ The woman chuckles.  _ “It’s gonna be a hell of a long game, so you’re gonna have to commit. You’re gonna have to give a few things up that you don’t want to, but I’ll help you with that too and it’ll be worth it.” _

His stomach clenches. His eyes dart around the room to the one way mirror. He licks his dry lips and tries to swallow. 

_ “I can either help you and your boy get out, or you can be stuck in here until they kill you. And they will kill you. You don’t have to worry about getting any of your little friends in trouble. I can tell you what to say, what’ll make them happy. But you need to make your decision pronto. They’re coming for you and I need an answer.” _

How is he supposed to answer if she told him not to talk?

_ “Nod your head if you’re in. You have less than a minute.” _

What if this is a trick? What if she’s a Talon agent and it’s all just a set up? Some long-winded trick to get out of him what Talon wants?

_ “Twenty seconds.” _

God.  _ God _ , what is he supposed to do? He’s frozen. He’s wasting time, wasting seconds. It’s a trick, it has to be, but if it’s not then it’ll be his only chance at even hoping to save Gabriel. It’ll be his only chance. 

_ “Come on, Morrison.” _

Jack nods. Short and grim, like he’s looking into a valley of skeletons and giving himself a little ‘well, fuck it, might as well’. He hears the woman chuckle again and then his comm fizzes back to static, and then shuts off. He’s left there sitting like an idiot having just agreed to god knows what. 

And then the door starts to open. 

Jack yanks his hand down from his visor in a definitely suspicious way and lurches to his feet, but it’s not smoke coming through the door. It opens wide, wider than it ever has before, and a body comes through instead. It’s a woman. She has Talon gear on, and wears their jagged insignia on her armored chest. She doesn’t have the helmet though, nor does she have a gun. In fact, it doesn’t look like she has any weapons on her at all. Not even a knife holster in her boots. 

Jack glares at her as she regards him, waiting for the doorway to grind closed behind her. She doesn’t move. She stands straight and firm, her arms at her sides, and Jack can barely keep himself upright. 

“Well?” She prods, arching up a dark brow with a condescending look. It’s not the same voice, not the same woman. 

“Where is he?” The words leave his mouth before he can even think of them. 

The woman’s mouth draws into a tight line and her brows furrow. She tucks her arms behind her back, and walks slowly over to the table. Jack doesn’t move except to turn his head to follow her. 

“ _ Where is he _ ?” He says again, more force behind his words this time. She gives the bloody remains of his shirt a scornful look and then sighs. 

“By now, Reyes will be locked in a cage smaller than this one on the other side of the continent. If you want to keep him alive, then you’d better start answering our questions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope the wait wasn't too long! Only about a week for this one. Now that the drama has kicked off, I hope you all enjoy this even more than before!


	8. Chapter 8

He’s floating. Drifting somewhere in the endless abyss of near-unconsciousness. As his mind starts to reboot and his body gradually begins to wake back up, the aches catch back up with him. The whole-body wrongness starts back up, but Gabriel is practiced enough to push that to the back of his head. What’s new is the aching pain in his temples and the pins and needles feeling of his arm. 

His arm. He tries groggily to open his eyes and move, but fails in both areas. His body isn’t responding as fast as his mind is to waking up. He’s already taking in his faculties, gathering himself back together from the mess he’d been during his last waking moment. 

He’s sitting up. He’s slumped over a table with his head resting on the surface. The metal is cool against his skin and unforgivingly uncomfortable. The blunt edge of it digs into his chest. His mouth is dry and tastes like blood. He rasps his tongue over his lips to try and get rid of the taste, and finds that it’s swollen with dehydration. How long has he been out? 

As his nerves start to wake back up, he feels that his arm is indeed back in physical shape at his side, no longer fluctuating between smoke and skin. It still feels odd, slightly displaced from the rest of him, but he’s certain it’s there. He manages to twitch his fingers, and realizes that there’s more pain than just his typical ache. There’s a sharper edge digging needlepoints into his forearm. Gabriel goes to lift up his arm but only manages to flex it, twitching the muscles and bring about the realization that there’s an  _ actual _ needle in him. An IV? Some sort of transfusion? Have they been feeding him through a tube? Jesus, how long  _ has _ he been out? 

His eyes snap open all at once and almost immediately he’s blinded by the bright fluorescent lights above. White, blaring, like the lights in Jack’s cell- not the oppressive crimson he’s used to. It hurts him. Gabe snaps his eyes shut and hisses through his teeth, screws up his face. It’s too bright. 

What are they _doing_ , putting him in a room like this? They know how photosensitive he is. And even before his transformation into the Reaper, he’d hated environments like this. It’s too much like the medical facilities in the S.E.P.

Alarm jars his body like a buckshot of adrenaline. 

Are they experimenting on him? Picking him apart to see what makes him tick? Desperately his eyes fly open again and, squinting against the glare, he sweeps his vision over the rest of the room, searching for some sort of torturous instrument, or lack of, to either prove or displace his panicked theory. It’s an empty room. Bare. Concrete floor, white walls, and a dim, one-way mirror. A holding cell. The only thing different from the place Jack is held in is the thick cable extending down from the ceiling, entwined with wires and ending in to the syringe plugged into the crease of his elbow.

The panic ramps up and just about sends his sluggish heart into an attack. Gabriel wheezes in a breath and struggles to heave himself up, fighting against his unresponsive body. What are they doing to him? Where’s Amélie? 

The needle deploys. Withdraws out of his arm with a pinching sensation and a mechanical clicking sound. The cable begins to draw upwards into the ceiling, a metal cover sliding closed over the small portal once it’s gone. 

Smoke hisses out between Gabriel’s teeth and floats up in wisps in front of his face. He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up  _ bad _ . Everything he’d worked for would come crumbling down, and everything he’d worked to hide would be exposed to the light. Talon wouldn’t have any use for him now that they knew. 

Now that the needle is gone, the feeling in his body returns quicker. All of his limbs are intact, no fluctuation, and aside from the aching and the sharp pinch of hunger in his middle, there’s nothing out of the ordinary but an awful headache. 

Right. They shot him. 

Gabe lifts himself up in a sitting position and leans back in the chair he’s been set it. His muscles squeal with pained protest and an ache stabbing up his bones. That tells him he’s been out longer than he should’ve. They were probably keeping him under until they could decide what to do with him. Not he just has to wait to see what conclusion they came to.

He doesn’t have to wait long. 

The thick door grinds open in under ten minutes. It swings far more open than it’s even been for when he goes to see Jack, and that tells him plenty about the situation he’s about to be in. They’re counting on him being too weak to try and make a break for it, and Gabriel’s liable to believe them. He’s not stupid; he knows how much energy was drained out of him and he still hasn’t been able to eat. Even if he wanted to be an idiot and try to make a break for it, he wouldn’t get farther than that door.

The person that walks into the room is one that Gabriel recognizes, and one that’s unarmed. Another piece of telling information, but this one makes things look better for him. They’ve left him unbound, and now Blackwood is coming to talk with him without a weapon. They’re not counting on him going on the attack. Either they still have some sort of trust for him, or they know as well as he does just how weak he is. 

Elias Blackwood is a younger person, olive skinned with hair short and tidy. Gabriel hasn’t spoken with them often before, and he definitely doesn’t know them on personal terms, but they’re met in passing. They’re something of a stickler for rules. A tight ass, but they hold themselves to the same expectations as everyone else. They’re a tactician, not a grunt. A smart kid with a knack for interrogation and something of a penchant for figuring people out. 

“Reyes,” They extend the greeting flatly. They’re trying to keep their voice level, and they’d be able to keep up that appearance to a lesser man, but Gabriel can pick up on the tightness. 

“Blackwood,” He returns, scraping the inside of his throat with his words. He’s so tired and still so hungry. “Glad to see you haven’t come to dispatch me.”

The corner of Blackwood’s mouth twitches. 

“We could argue about whether or not that’s actually  _ possible _ but I’d rather get straight to the point,” They say. “You have some explaining to do about what the hell just went down with you and Soldier: 76.”

Gabriel works his jaw as he tries to think of what to say. So they haven’t figured it out yet. Or that have and they just want to hear his side of the story. Give him a chance to defend himself. It’ll be more than what they’ve given any other traitor. His nose wrinkles and he sinks lower into the chair with a sigh. He’s not a traitor. He’s loyal to Talon and to their cause, grateful to them. 

“It was a stupid mistake,” He says. “I hadn’t eaten when I got back from the recon on Akande’s prison. I didn’t have the energy to see him and that’s my fault. It won’t happen again.”

Blackwood nods and looks partially satisfied, but only just. Gabriel’s only given a fraction of the story and they know it. But he’s not going to say any more until he knows exactly what they think. So when Blackwood arches a brow and tilts their head in a silent  _ go ahead _ motion, Gabriel stays clammed up. 

“Okay. That accounts for your loss of solidity and weakness,” Gabriel flashes a fang that Blackwood ignores. “-But not for Morrison’s reaction to you. Or your reaction to him. That all looked very suspicious, and the executives would like to know why that all happened.”

Gabe still doesn’t speak. He eyes Blackwood with a wary expression, jaw set and eyes narrow. Blackwood waits for a moment and then sighs and lays their hands on the table. 

“Look, they just want to know what happened. You haven’t cost us anything of value; he didn’t escape and there wasn’t any major damage to either of you as far as we know. But you haven’t given us the whole story, and that’s all they want right now.”

_ Right now _ . Like they’ll want something later. But he can only stay quiet for so long. Refusing to say anything will only look suspicious and mark him a risk or a target, and he can’t afford that. 

“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” He says slowly. He has to choose his words carefully. There’s no way that it’s just Blackwood- there’s someone behind that mirror and someone listening through the cameras. Blackwood is just the mouthpiece. “Morrison and I were close before Overwatch was shut down, but Talon already knows that. That was public knowledge. We were both part of the original strike team and we were both enrolled in the S.E.P. before that.

“I don’t see the point of telling you this,” Gabe sighs and leans forward to rest his arms on the table. “The executives already  _ know _ this stuff. There’s no use repeating.”

“You really expect them to believe you two were just teammates? After the way both of you reacted to each other once the mask came off?”

“What can I say? Jack was always a sentimental bastard. I’ll tell you what else is public knowledge: we weren’t too friendly there in the end. We might’ve been friends once, but we weren’t for a good while and we aren’t now. It’s not my fault that he’s an old bitch with a weak heart, but come on. He thought I was dead, and he finds out I’m not. I don’t know what reaction would be normal other than-”

“I’m not talking about him,” Blackwood cuts Gabriel off sharply and ignores the glower they receive for their rudeness. “I’m talking about you, Reyes.  _ You _ don’t have a reason to be surprised. You’ve known since the beginning who the Soldier was. You’re right, his reaction makes sense, but  _ yours _ doesn’t.”

Gabe has to force himself not to look at the mirror. Looking away from Blackwood would imply guilt and he can’t have that. He’s  _ not _ guilty. He hasn’t done anything wrong- except formerly be in love with his ex-technical-boss. The cords of his jaw tighten and his teeth grind against each other while Blackwood watches him, sharp and quizzical, set on prying loose an answer. 

“I didn’t want him to know,” Gabe says. That much is true, at least, but the rest won’t be. “I knew that once he found out he’d try to pull some emotional bullshit digging up our past, try to manipulate me to going easy on him. I just didn’t want to have to deal with that.”

Blackwood doesn’t respond. They just keep watching, boring into him.

“I don’t know I freaked out, okay? He caught me off guard and I wasn’t prepared for it. I guess it set me off, him getting the upper hand. And that’s my fault- I didn’t eat and that’s my problem. I wasn’t ready.”

They sigh a quiet breath out through their nose, but Gabriel doesn’t know what else to give. Blackwood pulls back from the table and slides both hands into their pockets, giving the Reaper a single nod. 

“Alright. I’ll tell them. You’re bound to catch some heat just for that; you know how important it is that you stay as functional as possible. If you keep having problems like that, fluctuating, you can talk with one of the medics,” They pause and scuff one heel against the floor, glance to the dim, thick glass. “I think they’ll understand. I get it. You want your revenge on him and you didn’t want to have that taken away for being too close. I don’t think they’ll pull you out more than they have to just to make sure that you’re stable and ready.”

Gabriel nods and forces himself to give a gratuitous smile, but his insides are cold. Blackwood doesn’t know how close they came to hitting the mark. 

“You’ll have to stay here until I can report all of this and the executives talk things over. Just for safety purposes.”

Blackwood waits for a nod, and then backs away from the table. Even Talon agents don’t want to turn their backs to Gabriel, and he finds some satisfaction in that as they leave the room. His eyes find one of the cyclops-eye cameras mounted on the ceiling, and he pulls up his hood to hide his eyes from the blaring lights overhead as he prays he won’t be separated from the interrogation. 


	9. Chapter 9

Five days. 

That’s the best estimation Jack can make for how long it’s been since he last saw the Reaper. He’s slept about a dozen times but he doesn’t count those as nights. His rhythm has been so fucked up since his capture he wouldn’t be surprised if he was on a nocturnal schedule.

They haven’t told him anything since they shot Gabriel outside of the cell. He’s done everything within his power to try and get any of the four separate agents to tell him anything,  _ anything _ about what they’ve done with Gabriel. The first one- the woman- had been impatient with him and his insistence. She’d quickly revealed the array of knives hidden on the inside of her vambrace and tried to use them to loosen his tongue, and his resolve. 

The second had also been a women, shorter and stockier than the last. Thickset with a pair of brass knuckles that she used to dislocate his jaw so he couldn’t shout at her for where Gabriel was and what they were doing with him. What they were doing  _ to  _ him.

They gave him a respite after her, let him fix his jaw back into place through a painful physical trial. 

That second woman had been replaced after that single event, and Jack had broken under the man they had sent in next. He didn’t even have to be beaten for it. It’d been an act of desperation, giving up the locations of a handful of agents- minor ones, lower rungs on the ladder, as if that fact would be any consolation to the thought he was responsible for their deaths. He’d done it hoping to be given any hint of Gabriel’s whereabouts and wellbeing, but he’d been told nothing. The guilt had nearly made him sick. The only thing that had kept him from vomiting was the thought of having it dried and stained in that cell with him for… However much longer he’d be locked up. 

The fourth and final interrogator had been another woman, and she’d been a combination of harsh words, manipulation, and pliers. Jack’s missing six fingernails in all from her, and a few teeth had been chipped. His poor visor was barely functioning after all of them wailing on him. Numerous times he’d thanked whatever deity existed that the claw marks left on his chest hadn’t grown infected and were already on their way to being just more gnarled scars to add to the bunch. One thing the S.E.P. did right, upgrading his healing factor.

He’s had no more messages from the woman that hacked into his visor, and none of the interrogators seemed to be her either. After this long, he’s starting to think it was a trick. Some sort of ruse just to get his hopes up, some psychological game to make him think he had a friend out there. 

He’s all but given up hope. Maybe they really did kill Gabriel, after they found out…

But no. That’s the thing that doesn’t make sense.  _ Why _ had Gabe been so panicked? Why had he been so desperate to get away? He’d known all along it was Jack,  _ he _ hadn’t been in the dark about their identities, so why had he come to pieces like that? And why was he locked up for it?

There’s pieces there, Jack knows it, but he can’t string them together. He could if he had more energy and more stability in his mind, but he has nothing of the sort. All he has is time and solitude and the jarring realization that his partner has been alive all this time, trying to kill him. 

He waits in his prison cell for the next lion to be let into the gladiator pen, sitting against the wall with his head leaning back. His eyes flutter closed every now and then, his body instinctually trying to shut down to reserve every scrap of energy. 

He doesn’t know how much time passes, but sooner or later the door starts to scrape open. Jack’s jarred out of the half-conscious state he’d drifted into but doesn’t get up; he waits there against the wall for whoever is coming in next and what weapon they’ll be carrying. But instead of another Talon grunt, the only thing that comes through the door is tendrils of smoke.

Jack lurches upwards, stumbling on his feet and choking in a haggard breath. He’s instantly alert and feels as if every nerve is being set on fire. It surprises him, how much emotion swells up in his chest just at the sight of the smoke alone. It’s the first warmth he’s felt in months, bubbling up in his throat and strangling him in joy. 

It’s Gabriel. 

Not the Reaper, not a wraith, not some mystic soul-eater. It’s  _ Gabe _ . 

That fact far outweighs the knowledge of what the Reaper has done. The proof that Gabe is still alive, still  _ okay _ drowns out Jack’s confusion and wariness. All he feels in that first moment is elation. 

His feet carry him towards the door without him realizing it. He’s staggering towards the morphing, undulating smoke, caught between exaltation and astonishment that he’s starting to think won’t ever go away. 

And then the rest catches up to him. And so does the Reaper. 

The smoke doesn’t collect itself into a physical form. The first syllable of Gabriel’s name is just escaping Jack’s lips when it snakes forward towards him, rushing him, reaching him, and then flowing  _ through _ him. He barely has the time to flinch away from the oncoming tide and then he’s gripped with a sensation unlike any other. 

It’s like a shove. It’s like struggling against a strong wind. It’s like choking on firesmoke. It’s like being drenched in cold water. It’s like being stabbed. 

For a moment, Jack thinks he’s having a heart attack. He almost pitches backwards onto the ground. He gasps reflexively, and only ends up choking on the burning that scrapes the insides of his mouth and down his throat. There’s a whooshing sound in his ears and he’s being pushed backwards. He’s surrounded by blackness, wrapped up in the ash from a burnt out fire, choking on tangible hatred, and then it’s gone. 

Jack drops to his knees, clutching his throat, and gags. He struggles for oxygen, chokes for it, and coughs out puffs of darkened smoke. It takes him a moment, but he gets to breathe again. He sucks in air greedily, pushes it back out, and takes another lungful. Quick and panicked. He’s still gasping when he’s kicked in the back. 

It sends him down with a grunt, flattening him against the floor, and he’s left staring up at the Reaper. He reaches for a face but all he gets is that cold mask. He hadn’t touched that fucking mask the entire five-ish days, he’s left it lying there under the one-way glass, and it was the first thing Gabriel went for. That hadn’t been an attack, he’d just been in the way. 

There’s a thousand questions on his lips and that bone-deep desperation is back. Jack tries to get up, collects his arms under him and braces them but the Reaper is already grabbing him. He husks out the wraith’s name like a warning, like he’s scolding a child, and then he’s being heaved upwards and tossed across the room. He hits the ground heavy, grunts from the impact, and skids. He lays winded and in shock, mind trying to catch up with his body. 

There’s no hesitation. None of that fear that Gabriel had shown the moment he’d been uncovered. And Jack is too stupid, too stunned and too floored by the reappearance to even try to fight back or duck away from those claws. The Reaper’s on him before he can even sit up, claws digging familiar patterns into his chest and ripping open the healing wounds there. Jack cries out, curses, and closes his hands around his assailant’s wrists. 

“Gabriel, stop!”

There’s a twinge, but he doesn’t stop. He digs deeper, snarls behind that mask, and tears one of those talons free to rake it across Jack’s shoulder. And then Jack’s body forgets about trying to reason with the man he loved and kicks itself into gear trying to sustain itself. 

Jack is still weak from the time he’s spent locked up. Five days hasn’t made him any stronger, so his struggles are just as ineffective as they were before, if not even more so. Whenever he gets a hold in, the Reaper just lapses into smoke to get free. Any blow he manages to return is shrugged off. 

The wraith doesn’t shy away from his job. His identity being revealed doesn’t seem to have put a peg in how savagely he attacks, and there’s no hesitance in the way he scores his claws through Jack like he’s trying to rend flesh from bone. But there’s no satisfaction either. There’s a fervor in the blows that he rains down, but it’s not the same. Before there had been an appreciation for the violence, a twisted joy, a fulfillment that came with doing Jack harm, but now it’s not there. It’s been replaced with something that Jack usually only sees in bodies under him, not above him; desperation. 

He doesn’t have to strength to fight back, to try to grapple the Reaper to the ground, all he can do is lift his arms and try to block his face from the blows raining down on him. But even in his tight, defensive state he feels there’s something off about this. There’s not a hint of the cruel joy the Reaper had always carried with him before when he made Jack bleed. 

The Reaper pries one of his arms away from the protective barrier over his face and slams it into the ground hard enough to make him yelp, and Jack comes to a sudden realization, there on the floor. He’s started to think of Gabriel and the Reaper as two separate entities, as if the thing pressing crushing weight into his stomach and closing a gloved hand around his throat isn’t the man that he one day thought of marrying. He’s thinking that the wraith picking him up by the neck isn’t the same as the panicked man that had fled the cell days before. It’s a dangerous thought process, and one that’s likely to get him killed. He’ll have to work on breaking it when he isn’t being flung across the room. 

It goes on like that. The Reaper doesn’t stop his attacks, but that fervent, foreign desperation fades away. He never asks for anything. Never demands a name or a location of an old Overwatch agent. All he does is throw Jack to one side of the room, stalk towards him, take a kick or two, and then throw him to the other side. 

Jack’s mask kicks on right as he makes impact with the one-way mirror. As he slides down the wall to crumple on the floor, groaning, static starts to fizz first in his left ear, then in both. His heard jerks up and suddenly he’s alert, focused on the hissing bursts of sound. The woman? Now? Doesn’t she know what’s happening?

The Reaper’s boot comes down heavy on his back and he hisses out a pained sound, neck bowing and shoulders curling up reflexively. 

“Stop it,” He grinds the words out like he’s scolding a troublesome dog, twisting an arm up to hold a hand over the side of his visor. A heel grinds into his spine, makes him hiss again, and Jack twists to grab the Reaper’s ankle with his other hand. 

“Stop!” He barks the word out like an order and, surprisingly, the Reaper does. Maybe just out of surprise, but he does. He cocks his head as Jack frowns at nothing, waiting for the static to give way to a voice. There’s an endless pause, and then the woman breaks through. 

_ “Cameras are off,” _ She reports, sounding a bit breathless.  _ “But they won’t stay that way for long. You boys better get to talking.” _

What? Jack twists again, cranes his neck to peer up at one of the cameras mounted on the ceiling. He can see the Reaper flexing his claws out of impatience, but he can’t see anything different about the cameras. There’s no tell. 

_ “C’mon, gringo, we already had this talk. Trust me or don’t; I’m not gonna waste my time trying to convince you.” _

And if it’s a trick? What’s the worst outcome? What does he have to lose? Before it would’ve been nothing. Before he would have gladly done something stupid enough to coax his own death just to save his family, but now Gabriel’s been thrown into the mix. He didn’t have a back up plan for  _ that _ . 

Even if it’s true, what’s he supposed to do? She said they should talk, but what the hell does that mean? Does she think him capable of talking Gabriel down? Does she even know that it is Gabriel? Who  _ is _ this woman?

_ “I’ll let you know when your time’s almost up.” _

The static cuts out. Jack’s left still laying on the floor with his brain practically short-circuiting with indecision. She can’t be trusted. He can’t risk it. Doesn’t even know what the hell he’d be risking or what he’d be doing to risk it.

The Reaper’s heel grinds into the bottom of his ribs, jerking him out of his stupor. Jack hisses out a curse and smacks the side of the wraith’s leg, lowers his other hand away from his visor to rest it on the floor and lean his weight against it. 

“Give it a rest,” He husks out.  The Reaper cocks his head again and Jack can just imagine the stunned, affronted expression behind that mask. 

“Excuse me?” 

“I said give it a  _ rest _ . Cameras are out. No one to put a show on for.”

The Reaper recoils at the news. He takes a step back and stares at Jack, mask unmoving but something still disbelieving. He lifts his head to a camera, then to the one-way glass, and then behind him to the heavy closed door. Jack huffs and starts to gather his limbs beneath him, inwardly cursing himself for not thinking of the mirror. Sure, the cameras might actually be cut out, but anyone could still be on the other side of the glass. 

He’s almost on his hands and knees, and then the Reaper’s boot comes back down on him, flattening him back against the floor. 

“What are you playing at?”

“God, just stop! Let me have some fucking respite.”

The Reaper bears down onto him with a growl, placing uncomfortable, painful pressure onto Jack’s spine.

“Tell me what you meant. Why would the cameras be out? How would you know?”

“I don’t-  _ know _ ,” Jack gasps out the words, dragging his hands across the floor, reaching for purchase to drag himself away from the strain on his spinal cord. “There’s a woman. She’s been talking through the comm in my visor, and that’s what she said, just now.”

“A woman,” The Reaper parrots, his typical growl made soft with confusion. The pressure on Jack’s back lessens and then pulls away entirely. The wraith steps away, moves towards the nearest camera and circles beneath it, peering upwards. 

Jack slowly rises up to his knees with a groan, pain pulsing up his shoulders. He spits out blood and some of his cheek goes with it. He flexes his hands and then his shoulders, rotating his neck slowly. A routine he usually saves for after his interrogator leaves to makes sure that nothing is broken. So far he’s either been lucky or only had hairline fractures. 

His legs almost go out from under him when he stands up. He leans against the wall until they stop shaking and starts to move towards the table so he can sit and rest. He watches the Reaper as he moves, but the wraith has lost his predatory nature. He stays at a distance, watching Jack. 

It hurts to lift himself onto the table, makes him groan through clenched teeth, but he does it anyway. He can’t trust his legs to support him. He stays perched there, panting, taking in his faculties, keenly aware of the concealed eyes boring into him. 

They’ve got a time limit. He doesn’t know what the woman did- if she actually  _ did _ do anything- and he doesn’t know how long it’ll last. It could end in the next minute. There’s a pressure closing around his throat, an impatient persistence nagging the back of his skull. He has to say  _ something _ , but he doesn’t know what. He hadn’t thought of what he was supposed to say if he got Gabriel alone- mostly because he didn’t ever suspect it’d  _ happen _ . And if it did, he’d figure that he’d come up with what to say in the moment. Some long spiel about how sorry he was and what had Talon done to him to turn him again his family and why hadn’t he just  _ told  _ Jack in the first place. 

But now words are failing him, and it feels like his tongue is made of lead. He has to say something. They’ve only got so much time and he can’t let it go to waste. Even if it’s a trick. 

“Are you okay?”

It’s all he can muster, and all that makes sense to say. The Reaper regards him silently and makes Jack feel like an idiot. Of course he isn’t okay. He’s supposed to be  _ dead _ . He’s been taken by Talon and he’s been hunting down and killing his family and- 

“What do you mean?”

Seriously? Jack arches up a brow and starts to shrug off his jacket to check his arms for bruising. He doesn’t look at the Reaper when he talks, turns his eyes instead to his own skin. 

“They shot you,” He says. “Last time, outside the door.”

The Reaper takes another pause. His silence in unnerving. 

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” There’s something in his tone, some smugness that Jack doesn’t like. 

“Are you?” He shoots back. The Reaper chuckles. 

“Depends on your definition.”

“Don’t be fucking smart. Gabe, what have you been  _ doing _ ?”

“Don’t call me that. That’s not who I am anymore.”

“What, and this is? What did they  _ do _ to you?”

“ _ You _ did this to me!” The Reaper disintegrates, rushes Jack in a column of smoke and rears up in front of him, snarling hate and spitting bitter venom. Smog wreaths off of him and leaches out from his hood, fills the air with a hissing sound and a rotting stench. He’s more smoke than flesh, intangible from the waist down. 

Jack recoils from the charge, leaning back on the table and lifting his arms defensively to his chest. The Reaper slowly lowers himself back to the floor, his legs taking shape and the rest of him solidifying. Smoke still drips out of his mask, but in a far lesser quantity. 

“You did this to me,” He says again, softer this time but every inch as hateful. “You turned me into this. It’s your fault.”

The guilt Jack’s been carrying for Gabriel’s death doubles. It grips his insides and gives them a cruel twist, stabbing into his heart and filling his head with shame. It’s true. He knows it.

“Talon let me see the truth. They opened my eyes to just how much you all betrayed me. They gave me a chance to get even.”

He sounds so sure. There’s not a hint of doubt, and that mask isn’t any help at trying to figure if he really believes it. That fucking mask. Jack’s mouth presses into a tight line as he clenches his jaw and he lifts up both hands towards the Reaper’s face. An impulsive decision, and one that proves to be a mistake. The Reaper’s claws are around his wrists before he can even touch the metal, wrenching them back as the wraith leans in close with a growl, pushing into Jack’s space. 

“You did this to me,” He rasps again. Jack’s frown deepens and he twists his hands in the Reaper’s grip, trying to squirm free. He has to get that mask off. He has to make it Gabe again, that’s all he can think. He  _ knows _ Gabe. If he can make it Gabe, then they’ll be on more even ground. 

“Just let me see you,” It comes out as more of a plead than he’d like. He sounds as pathetic as he feels. The Reaper tilts his head. 

“Why? So you can gloat? Mock me?”

“Goddamn it Gabe, just let me  _ see! _ ” Jack strains forward against the grip on his wrists, snapping his jaws once. He comes nose to nose with that owlish mask, close enough to hear the rasp of the Reaper’s breath and smell the decay. “Please.”

He hears the Reaper snort, but then the grip on his wrists lessen. The claws fall away and drop to the wraith’s side, leaving Jack’s hands free. He hesitates for a moment, working his jaw against the torn side of his cheek, and then slowly lifts his hands up. He expects the Reaper to recoil, but he doesn’t. He stays stockstill as Jack rests his hands first on his clavicle and then reaches up for his face. He touches the bottom of the mask, rubs the pad of his thumb over the cold metal, and then pushes it up. It slides upwards easily, revealing the face underneath it.

Up close, Gabriel looks even worse. It’d been horrific and terrifying to see him before, and now it’s just sickening. His skin is an ashen patchwork and his face is gaunt and sunken. There’s sloppy, knife-edge scars that Jack’s unfamiliar with cutting over the skin. And the eyes. Bloodshot, burning cold red with deep, dark circles beneath them. Wrong. He looks like a corpse. 

“God.”

“Ugly, aren’t I?” Gabe cracks a wry smirk that makes Jack’s stomach churn. His voice is still wrong with the mask off. Deep and grating and outlined in reverb. Like every syllable is a struggle.

Jack’s hands drop, slides over Gabriel’s skin to cup his face. Gabe’s lip curls in the corner, flashing pointed teeth, and he growls a quiet warning that Jack ignores. He runs his fingers over the pale motley of skin, drags them through the scraggly beard that’s shot with a handful of gray hairs. Despite the sick feeling of guilt still swamping his insides, he can’t help but marvel at it. He’s touching Gabe again.

But he’s been touching Gabe this whole time. Every fight with the Reaper has been Gabe. Every victim he’s found, every emaciated, twisted corpse has been because of Gabe. The old agents going missing. The beatings he’s taken. The threats on his life. 

“What happened to you?”

“I already told you. This is what you did to me.”

“No- No, I didn’t do this. This might be a byproduct of my fucking stupidity, but I didn’t  _ do _ this. Not personally. This is Talon.”

“ _ Talon? _ ” Gabriel’s face shifts into something like confusion, and then quickly reverts back to distant loathing. “Talon didn’t do this. Overwatch did. Talon  _ saved _ me.”

Jack pulls his hands back. It’s his turn to be confused, but his face is much more telling. He’s flabbergasted. Talon? Talon doesn’t  _ save _ . They destroy. They blow up buildings and murder families and take what they want. They infiltrate governments and plant agents and kidnap loved ones. They manipulate.

“What are you talking about? What do you mean they saved you? They’re the ones that blew up the Swiss HQ in Zürich and infiltrated our ranks. You know that.  _ You’re _ the one that kept trying to tell me that.”

Gabe can’t hide it this time. His confusion is clear and all it does it make Jack more concerned. How far did Talon twist the truth? What the fuck did they do to make Gabriel believe they were on his side?

“No. You’re wrong.”

He doesn’t even had a rebuttal, but there’s no lack of certainty in his voice. 

“Gabe, you spent  _ months _ trying to tell me Overwatch had been compromised. They were-”

Gabriel’s claws close around his throat. Jack recoils from the contact alone, startled and frightened. Gabe’s mouth twists into a snarl and his grip closes, strangling off Jack’s windpipe with no warning. Bubbles of panic burst in Jack’s chest and he grabs at Gabriel’s wrists, trying to pry those hands away. 

“Do not,” Gabe hisses. “Try to trick me. I’m not going to believe your lies. You left me there to die. You  _ left _ me. I should’ve died. I was  _ supposed _ to die but you wouldn’t let me. You had to drag me back. You couldn’t just let me  _ rest! _ ” 

Jack can feel his windpipe creaking. His lungs wilt in his chest and his head grows hot, thought swimming with the crushing pain and the lack of oxygen. His hands wrench away from Gabriel's and scrabble instead at his chest, fumbling against the leather and metal of his armor and coat. Gabe’s face is an unmoving snarl of hatred. 

“You  _ all _ left me. You all betrayed me. You took what was mine. You left Ana to die. You sent dozens of my soldiers to their deaths to satisfy your own goals.”

Darkness spots the edge of Jack’s vision. His mouth gapes open, trying uselessly to suck in oxygen. Spittle drools down his chin. Soldiers? Gabriel would never call his people that- never refer to them like they were just hired guns. They were his  _ family _ , each and every one. He bares his teeth, tries to choke out a word but all he gets is a syllable. 

“You. Reinhardt. Shimada. Gérard. That fucking half-breed. You all deserve what you get for what you did.”

_ “Five minutes,” _ It’s crisp and clear this time, no cut of static before or after. Jack can hardly collect the thought of her listening this whole time. 

Gabriel holds on a moment longer, watching Jack writhe and choke in his hands. When Jack’s eyes start to roll back, he lets go and steps away. Jack collapses backwards, hands flying to claw at his throat, and he gasps for breath for the second time that day. He coughs as he struggles, chest heaving and limbs giving errant, panicked twitches. There’s a million things he wants to say, dozens of questions he wants to ask, but he can only manage on word before he starts to cough again;

“ _ Cameras _ .”

Gabriel’s head twists upwards immediately, searching for one of them and reaching to pull his mask back down over his face. There’s fear in that movement; it’s too quick, like a child rushing to cover up a mistake. Jack still doesn’t know what he has to hide. 

“Are they back? Are they on?”

“No,” Jack chokes out. “No, not- not yet. F-five, minutes. She said five minutes.”

“ _ Sombra _ ,” The Reaper growls out his annoyance, flexing his metal claws. Jack knows that word, but it was said like a name instead of a thing. 

“What? What are you- talking about?”

“Sombra. She’s the one doing this. She turned the cameras off. She’s doing it to fuck with me.”

“Why would she-?”

“Because she’s a bitch. That’s why. I shouldn’t have started talking to you. I should’ve kept doing my job,” The Reaper turns back towards the table where Jack is laying and stalks towards him, smoking wreathing out from under his mask. “You’re not going to trick me. Not again.”

“Gabe I’m not t-trying to  _ trick _ you,” Jack manages, straining upwards onto his elbows. “I’m just trying to-”

“Shut up,” The Reaper’s claws close around his middle and heave him off of the table, drop him to the ground with a heavy thump. Jack’s head cracks against the floor, dragging a yelp out of him, filling his vision with bursts of light. Then the Reaper steps over him and drops down, straddling Jack’s stomach and flattening him with his weight. 

“Gabe,  _ please _ ,” Jack pleads, hands moving up to push at the wraith’s chest, trying weakly to dislodge him. 

“ _ Shut up _ .”

Claws close around his throat again but don’t choke. They just linger there and Jack’s pulse hammers against the leather. Jack’s tongue rasps over his lips and then he swallows, staring up at the immovable mask, trying to come up with some way he can get to his old partner. 

_ “Hang in there, Morrison,” _ The woman mumbles in his ear.  _ “He’s not the same as you remember. They got to him bad. Just play it cool. I’ll be able to get you more time like this so you can talk with him.” _

The Reaper pulls back a hand, forms it into a fist, and brings it down on Jack’s cheekbone. His head snaps to the side with the blow and the air leaves him again, a grunt of pain going with it. 

_ “Remember I’m trying to help you so you can help me. Did a good job today giving me some trust, hope you keep doing that in the future. I’m going to put some things in motion to help you along.” _

Another blow. He hears the Reaper chuckle when the skin of his cheek splits.

_ “You’re going to have to do some work of your own, but I can feed you false trails to say too. I’ll help you get your boy back. Just stay alive until then.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad that you all enjoyed the last chapter so much! I'm trying to get back into the swing of posting at least semi-regularly, hopefully on a weekly basis. I've already got a good amount of work on the next chapter done, but it's going to be a long one. My bias for writing Gabriel over Jack is really going to come out.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit late, but it's extra long to make up for that! I do want to give a warning- there's a scene where sexual abuse is verbally implied. There's no explicit talk about it, but the event is insinuated.  
> Hope you enjoy!

Jack’s left wheezing on the floor when Gabriel leaves the cell. Curled up on his side, holding his ribs, blood dripping down his chin and bubbling at his lips. Pathetic. 

Gabe doesn’t pause outside. He doesn’t give the guards a glance. He’s moving before he even completely solidifies, storming down the hall and leaving clouds of smoke in his wake. He didn’t get anything out of Jack, no confessions, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have the mind to make a report; all he can think of is Sombra. 

He’s going to wring her neck when he finds her. That’ll teach her to meddle in his affairs. She’s getting too cocky for his liking, thinking she can stick her hands in whatever pie she sees. He’s going to cut off those damn hands if she doesn’t back off. 

She’d made him look and act like a damn fool. Giving in to Morrison’s tricks and letting him talk, answering his questions just to get more demanded of him. All it’d done was scramble his thoughts even more, but he can’t focus on it now. He has to find Sombra and cut out her tongue. 

She’s slippery to find but not hard to get ahold of on the coms. Talon tries to keep her as accessible as possible so all of her endless connections can be just a call away. She doesn’t have a tracking device in her to keep her on the radar, not like Gabriel or Amélie. 

Getting through to her properly would involve going through at least half a dozen mandated regulations, even with Gabriel’s power in Talon. She’s only put on his frequency when they go out on missions together, but he knows for a fact that she makes a game out of bothering Amélie when they’re technically not supposed to be in contact. She won’t be doing it  _ now _ , because she’s apparently been turning security cameras on and off, but maybe Amélie will have some idea where exactly the slippery bastard is. 

He passes a cluster of young agents as he storms towards the personal quarters, but he ignores them. He doesn’t have time for their looks or their mutters. He’s angry enough, set enough on finding something to sink his claws into that he almost slips beneath the door of Amelie’s room. He stops at the last moment, forces himself to stay solid, and instead bangs on the metal of the door. Not his usual announcement of his arrival. 

There’s a pause, a slight thump, and then Amélie is at the door. She’s guarded as she comes, opening it only an inch like she expects an attack. When she sees who her visitor is, she pulls the door open a few inches wider but Gabriel doesn’t come inside. He stays out in the hall, heaving burning ash, flexing his claws. 

“What is it?” She asks, giving him a narrow look. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing. I just need to know where to find Sombra,” The lie burns fiercer than normal. He’s not used to lying, not to her. They’ve always been honest with each other. 

“Sombra?” Amélie repeats, brow furrowing and head tilting. Even when expressing, she manages to look distant. But every twitch of her muscle gives away an emotion, and only Gabriel has observed enough to read the confusion on her face. “I’m not sure I can help you with that. I haven’t heard from her in a couple of days. What did she do now?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel says again. His lie is weaker this time, he can feel it, and he can see that Amélie doesn’t believe him. Both brows arch and she lets go of the door, crossing both arms over her chest. She waits. 

He can’t tell her. He can’t reveal his weakness to her. She’s stronger than he is; she’ll report him to the executives and make sure that they fix him. And she should, because he’s been breaking every day since Jack saw his face. She should because it’s what he needs, and he should want her to. But there’s something in him that doesn’t. Something long buried, a gut reaction that leaves a sour taste in his mouth and a resistance in his head. He hates the feeling. He wants it to go away, but he doesn’t want it to be taken. 

“ _ Gabriel _ ,” She urges him with an edge to her voice. He hisses annoyance, and the sound simmers down into something dangerously close to a whine. 

“I can see that something’s bothering you. Is it 76?” Her face morphs again, this time to concern. It’s a bad look for her, one that he doesn’t want turned towards him. “What’s he done now?”

“It’s not him. He hasn’t done anything new. I just need to find Sombra.”

“Tell me what he’s done, Gabe. Is he still making you feel like-”

“Just tell me where she is!” He explodes on her for the first time in months. Rises up over her as smoke billows out from under his cloak and his hood. Amélie leans back, but not even for a second is there fear on her face. She’s startled for a moment, and then she molds into scorn. She regards him with disdain, nostrils flaring and lips pursed, and he feels like an animal. Like a dog snapping at its owner. 

Gabe sinks back down in shame and his hands come together in front of him, claws digging into the thick layers of his vambraces. Sheepish and apologetic, but still resistant to admit what happened. 

“I… She’s, done something. I don’t know what she’s trying to get at it, but she’s trying to meddle with what I’m doing to Morrison. Trying to fake me out,” His confession comes out soft and uncertain, mumbled under his breath like he’s afraid someone’s going to hear. 

“Done something,” Amélie parrots him again, just as soft as before but with a tone far more questioning. “What’s she done?”

Gabriel shifts his weight uncomfortably and lifts his head to look first to his right, and then to his left. The hallway is empty and he already knows that, but the gesture tells Amélie that he’s worried about being heard without him having to actually saying it. Her painted mouth twists in indecision, leaving Gabe hanging and obsessing over being ratted on, and then she pulls the door open all the way. 

He’s quick to slip inside, quick to wrench off his mask and turn to her, waiting in anxious suspense as she closes the door and turns slowly to him. He can see the gears moving in her head, the risks she’s judging to take or not, bending the iron cage of rules that wrap around her will.

“Tell me what she’s done. I won’t help you unless you tell me what’s going on.”

“Amélie…” 

“ _ Non. _ You tell me or I don’t help.” 

She folds her arms once again and goes back to glowering. Gabriel shrinks under her look. He can’t. He can’t, he can’t, but he  _ has _ to. Holding this secret will make him sick and who else does he trust enough to share it with? He gnashes his teeth, snarls out a short plume of smoke, and stamps one foot like a child. 

“She turned the fucking cameras off,” He finally spits out. “They let me back in with Jack and she turned the cameras off. Apparently she doesn’t have anything better to do than fuck with me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Do I look like I know? That’s what I’m trying to get out of her.”

Amélie regards him for another moment. Her face gives nothing away, but Gabriel can sees the calculations in her eyes. It occurs to him that she has things to hide as well, and he feels like a fool for doubting her. She’s already trusted him to not report her for visiting Gérard’s grave. She’s not supposed to still feel and yet every time he comes to visit her, every time it’s just the two of them, he can see her struggling to do so. To drag up anything besides the satisfaction of a kill. He’s spending his time trying to stay what he’s meant to be, and she’s here fighting it. It’s shameful. He doesn’t deserve her.

She turns away from him with a sigh, dropping her arms to her sides in defeat. She mutters an annoyed compliance and moves towards her bed. Using it in lieu of a stepstool, she stands upon the mattress and reaches upwards for the window. Moving the black curtain aside, she heaves herself up onto the narrow sill. There’s barely enough room for her to be up there, but she somehow manages to balance herself even when she struggles to heave the window open. Gabriel watches her blankly, trying to piece together what she’s doing. The windows in the facility don’t open more than three inches or so to keep anyone from getting in, or out. But he doesn’t question her actions, just watches. Knowing Sombra, he’s half expecting Amélie to pull the little shit in through that three-inch gap by the scruff of her neck.

Amélie slides one slim arm through the opening up to her elbow, body pressed up against the glass to keep herself from falling backwards. It’s an obviously uncomfortable position, but she goes on reaching outside for a moment. When she pulls back, she has something in her hand. She closes the window and hops down from the sill, bouncing off of the bed and onto the floor with a quiet thump. She holds both hands out to Gabriel, cupping a black metal bracelet between them. 

He stares at it for a moment, looks up to Amélie, then looks back down at it. Delicately he takes it from her, plucking it from her hands between two claws. 

“She gave it to me,” The sniper says, tucking her arms behind her back. “Sombra. It’s special. Attuned to her personal comm. She said it was in case I ever needed a favor.”

Gabriel turns the bracelet over in his hands. There’s a few buttons lining the inside of it, three in all, one after the other with the only distinction being white rings outlining a single one. He turns it over again and runs his thumb over the outside, searching for any other tells that the bracelet is not what it appears. But there are just three black stripes wrapping around it , indented into the lighter plastic. 

“How does it work?”

Amélie sidles closer to Gabriel, comes up to his arm and reaches one arm out for the bracelet. She lays a hand over one of his, guides him to touch the first button, the one with a ring around it. 

“When you press this one, the ring turns green. That’s what turns it on. Press it again and it turns off.”

She touches the second one. 

“Hold this to talk.”

And then the third. 

“If you press and hold this one, it’ll send out a distress signal. It’ll broadcast the location of wherever it is to Sombra. I’ve never pressed that one.”

A strange device to give to a trained assassin. Some might even find it endearing. Others might find it creepy. Gabriel isn’t sure what his opinion of it is. All he knows is that it would appear the two women are closer than he’d pegged. 

“Have you used it before?” He asks it out of genuine curiosity. He tries to keep any hint of fault out of his tone, but still Amélie balks and steps away from him, eyes on the floor.

Gabriel doesn’t press her. He eyes her for a moment, expression going soft, and then looks back at the bracelet. It’s not exactly a reportable offense, having it, but still Amélie went to the trouble of hiding it. But he won’t ask why. He doesn’t have the right to suspect her of hiding other things, more unsavoury things, when he’s struggling himself with Jack and all of the things he feels every time he sees the old soldier. 

He has a heartbeat of hesitation, a moment of doubting Amélie and doubting what Sombra told her. Doubting himself and his resolve. Then he presses the first button down.

The ring lights up green, just as Amélie said it would, and a soft crackling sound of static comes from the indented stripes. Gabriel tilts his head and casts Amélie a glance. She looks back at him, arms folded around her middle, and then reaches out to press the button to talk. 

“Sombra.”

The soft purr of the static cuts out when she talks, and then resumes when she lets go. Like the ancient walkie talkies. Primitive enough in technology to function but not be detected by Talon, while simultaneously tinkered with by someone clever enough to make it fit into a bracelet. Sombra’s too smart for her own good. 

_ “This is some bad timing, Araña,” _ Sombra’s voice comes through the static crystal clear. She sounds breathless, but not bothered. There’s a genuine fondness in her voice that Gabriel hasn’t heard before.  _ “Kind of in the middle of something here, so if this isn’t an emergency I’d suggest we talk about whatever this is later. You all good? In trouble?” _

“I’m not in trouble. But it sounds like you might be.”

_ “Oh yeah?” _ There’s a laugh, a short little chortle. Genuine again, no sign of snark.  _ “Why’s that? You angry with me?” _

“No,” Amélie responds quietly, half of a murmur. Her eyes lift to Gabriel’s face and she gives him a small nod.“But he is.”

“ _ Sombra _ .”

He grinds her name out in a snarl. That’s typically how he addresses her anyway, but there’s a lack of annoyance that usually comes with having to speak with her. It’s been replaced with cold, warning anger. 

Sombra doesn’t respond for a moment. The room is filled with only the sound of the quiet static. Gabriel glowers at the bracelet, already forming the list of threats he’s going to make to her and daring her to act like she doesn’t know what this is about. 

_ “Ayy, Gabrielito. ¿Qué onda?” _ There’s a hint of laughter in her voice, but now with her typical mockery. No guilt, no hint of shame for being confronted immediately.  _ “How’s the job going? Get anything new out of Morrison?” _

“ _ Cállate _ ,” Gabriel hisses the word out, free hand flexing into claws. He wants to sink them into something. He wants Sombra to show her face for once so he can blind her. “Don’t play dumb with me.What the hell is your issue? What are you trying to play at?”

_ “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean! I haven’t been doing anything but what I do best; minding my own business and letting all you big dogs do the dirty work. Like I should be. You accusing me of being a troublemaker?” _

“If you don’t tell me what the hell you’re aiming to get out of this, I’m going to rip out your eyes and make you  _ eat _ them.”

_ “Oy! Lacroix, you hear this? You gonna let him talk to me like that?” _

“I am not apart of this, but I would advise you to answer Reyes’ questions.” 

_ “Ach. Taking his side. I see how it is.” _

Gabriel hisses again and smoke comes out with the sound this time, billows up around his face. He grips the bracelet tighter, threatens to break it in his grip. Amélie huffs and reaches out to take it from him, ripping it out of his grasp and holding it herself. 

“He already has enough of his plate, Sombra. Just get on with it.”

_ “Fine, fine. But only because you asked me so nicely.” _

Amélie snorts quietly and holds the bracelet back out to Gabriel. He eyes it, growling under his breath, but takes it. 

_ “I’m helping you and your boy out, is all. You two are real pitiful and I feel bad for you.” _

“My  _ boy _ ?” Gabriel demands. Sombra ignores him. 

_ “I know you’ve been having issues ever since he got brought in. Hard time keeping it together, yeah? Keep thinking about what happened in the old days, before Talon got their hands on you and saved your life, right?” _

Gabriel goes dead still. He fixes his eyes on the bracelet, doesn’t look up, but he can feel Amélie’s attention draw up sharply to him. It’s subtle, but he sees. He knows her. The slight snap of her head towards him, the intent look in her eyes. Sombra’s gone and ratted him out. 

_ “I’m just doing some digging is all. You know how I am with getting things good for me. I’m just thinking that your old buddy Morrison could do something for me if I played my cards right, that’s all.” _

It doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t account for dragging him into it, trying to give them time alone together. She’s trying to draw him off, and not even putting that much effort into it. She’s not concerned at all. 

“Bullshit.”

_ “Just keep on doing what you’re doing. And please don’t bug poor Widow about this again. She doesn’t have anything to do with our transactions. Ciao.” _

“Sombra, I swear to god you’d better give me a straight answer!”

But no answer comes at all. The static persists with no reply. He tries a few more times with no luck, and Amélie pries the bracelet away from him when his threats start to get gruesomely detailed. 

“I’m going to kill her,” He snarls when he’s finished trying to snatch it back out of her hands. 

“You are not. Even if you could get your hands on her, you wouldn’t kill her. You know how important she is to Talon. Her connections are priceless.”

He bites back a comment about the  _ connection _ between Sombra and Amélie, grinding his teeth on a growl. 

“I hate her.”

“I know, chère.”

“I  _ hate _ her. Meddling in my fucking business. Trying to trip me up. What the hell’s her game?”

“She might just be trying to help you.”

“ _ Pendejadas! Esa mujer hijo de puta está tratando de sabotearme! _ ” He snarls the words out, whipping away from Amélie and storming to the nearest wall. He intends to gouge his claws through it, but he stops himself at the last moment and turns away instead, beginning to pace. 

He knows she can understand him; even if she didn’t know Spanish, she’s been around him long enough to pick up on every curse in the book. He stalks back and forth across the room, trying to lock his anger inwards so it won’t explode onto her. She stands back and lets him, arms slowly slipping behind her back. After a moment, she speaks. 

“Do you not trust me?”

He stops pacing but doesn’t turn towards her. He’s still heaving, still panting out smoke rage. He doesn’t bother pretending that he doesn’t know what she means. She’s talking about what Sombra said, what he’s gone through since Morrison was captured, and he doesn’t have an explanation for keeping it from her. 

“I trust you,” He rasps. 

“Then why have you not told me what troubles you? There is nothing I do not tell you.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“And that’s your excuse? Not knowing if I’m honest with you?” There’s emotion leaching into her voice. It surprises him enough to turn towards her, to see her upset, betrayed expression. 

“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t. I just- I can’t sort anything out. My head’s a fucking mess and I’m trying to put it back together. I can’t afford to go to pieces again.”

“Why? Why is it so important that  _ you _ are the one to interrogate him?”

“This has always been about me and him. This has  _ always _ been about my revenge.”

“You are lying to me  _ again _ !” She whispers the claim out fiercely, advancing on Gabriel with both hands reaching for him. Her movement startles him enough to take a step back, but he doesn’t escape the grip that snatches onto his coat and yanks him downwards face to face with her. “You tell me why you are so obsessed with Morrison this instant.”

“Please Amélie, I can’t do this.”

“Tell me!” 

Her face is inches from his. He can see the desperation in her unnatural, golden eyes, and he can’t piece together where it’s coming from. He doesn’t know why it’s so important for her to know, but he knows it’s important, and he’s never been able to keep something from her. 

“I was in love with him,” He breathes. “Back before. And he betrayed me. He deserves what he gets.” 

She holds him still. Her eyes drag over his face, searching for any hint of dishonesty. She finds none. There’s something that shifts in her face, a recollection, a familiarity, and slowly her grip eases away from him and her hands drop. 

“I just want you to be safe. You need to be careful. She can turn the cameras off, but they can still have ways of watching. I do not want you to be hurt.”

“Thank you,  _ querida _ ,” He murmurs quietly. His eyes slide down to the floor. He feels ashamed for keeping the past from her, keeping something so minimal from her. 

Her hands lift again and reach to cup the sides of his face. Cold against his skin with palms soft and fingers slim and delicate. She pulls him down again, gentle this time, and arches up on her toes to press her lips to his forehead. 

“Be safe,  _ chère _ , and be careful.”

\---

_ The kid isn’t adapting well.  _

_ It’s nothing wrong with his body. The body is fine. Completely up to par. Everything he tells it to do, it does. It responds perfectly. He’s bested nearly everyone that’s been thrown in a ring with him, Jesse included. He’s even pinned Gabriel himself down once or twice. It’s nothing with the body. It’s with his mind.  _

_ He can’t stand to look at himself. He avoids glass and any other sort of reflective surface. He’s been responsible for several broken mirrors around the base, shattered into shards with one sharp, angry blow. Even if he won’t admit to it, Gabriel knows. _

_ The barrier he’s putting up that disconnects him from himself affects how he interacts with others as well. He’s distant from the other Blackwatch members, cold to any friendly gestures, unwilling to engage in conversation, and he only speaks when he has to- like when Gabriel addresses him- or when he mutters Japanese under his breath. His sullen, detached demeanor marks him as an outsider. After greeting any attempts to bond or welcome the kid with that coldness, the others have started to leave him alone. Even Jesse has started to become indifferent and uninterested, but that could easily be because Genji’s threatened to turn him into cowboy fillet half a dozen different ways. _

_ Guarded. Quiet. Hanging back from the groups and turning up in odd places at odd times of the night. Reminds Gabriel of how he was when he first joined the S.E.P., but Genji doesn’t have a Morrison to make him open up. _

_ It’s close to midnight, and he’s heading back to his personal quarters from Jack’s. Out of habit, he heads down to the training area to make sure that no one’s hanging around there. Jesse used to lock himself up there to be closer to the weapons down there when he was first picked up. He hasn’t done that in years, but a few other kids have done things like that. Holed themselves up out of paranoia or taken up late-night training where no one else will see them. _

_ Blackwatch’s arena is underground and smaller than the one typical Overwatch agents use, but it’s also more deadly. The training Omnics are programmed to be more violent, more clever, and there are dozens of holographic simulations to run through as well as a few hard-light obstacle courses. It’s all right next to their weapons vault, but that hasn’t been touched. Gabriel can see that once reaches the base of the stairs. The heavy door is shut. It’s the holograms that are being used.  _

_ Glowing blue and blank and expressionless, half a dozen figures encircle Genji in the middle of the room. They stand on the raised circular dais used for the holographic battles and the control panel is lit up, running through a randomized selections of foes and methods of attack. Genji doesn’t notice Gabriel’s entrance, continuing his brutal assault on the programmed enemies. He doesn’t use his katana. In fact, it isn’t even on him. He has only his shurikens and his wakizashi.  _

_ Gabriel isn’t entirely surprised to see him. Kid’s been obsessing over getting to the same level of strength and sharp reflex that he had when he was all flesh and bone. Doesn’t seem to realize that he’s already surpassed it.  _

_ He takes out two with a wide fling of his shurikens and rolls out of the way of a charging foe, instantly back up on his feet and flicking two more at its back. The three holograms shatter like glass, breaking into pixelated pieces that soak into the ground. Gabriel watches him as he moves slowly towards the control panel, not making an effort to be quiet but not announcing himself either. He wants to see what the kid can do when he thinks no one’s looking.  _

_ Genji’s fast. Inhumanly fast thanks to Overwatch’s tech, and it’s clear that it throws him off. He dashes through two more holograms with his blade, cutting them down, and stops and turns on a dime with shurikens slipping out from his plated forearm between his fingers. He drops one of them, stumbles trying to snatch it out of the air, and one of the holograms barrels into his side. The impact sends him sprawling but his body responds faster than would be possible. It picks him up, uses the inertia to roll once more to his feet, but Genji can’t orient himself and he stumbles once again, sliding backwards.  _

_ Gabriel reaches the control panel and rests both hands on the glowing glass, but doesn’t shut it off. He watches as the hologram charges Genji again. Genji uses the momentum himself this time, letting himself fall and taking the blue figure with, rolling it underneath him. Instead of using his wakizashi, however, he just starts to claw at the hologram. Gouging his fingers through it and sending sputtering pixels across the dais. Sloppy and angry, fueled by his frustration.  Gabriel shuts the simulation off with the press of a button.  _

_ The blue figures shimmer and dissolve down into the silver dais. Genji drops an inch or two when the false body disappears, and he whips towards the control panel with fury plain in his expression even with his face half covered. That anger dissolves when he sees it’s Gabriel and he scrambles up to his feet, looking chagrined now at being caught.  _

_ “Commander,” He mutters, dipping himself stiffly into a  _ futsuurei _ bow. “I apologize for using training equipment while unauthorized. I was feeling restless and could not sleep. It won’t happen again.” _

_ Gabriel grunts in acknowledgement and shuts the program off entirely, sliding glowing bars to rest and locking it down for the night.  _

_ “It’s fine, Shimada. Everyone comes down here to train on their own time. I’m not going to get you in trouble or report you to Jack.” _

_ “To Morrison.” _

_ Gabriel looks up. Genji doesn’t look like he wants a fight. Doesn’t look like he’s trying to rile Gabriel up. His correction was toneless, almost polite, and Gabriel realizes that he’s questioning the nature of his and Jack’s relationship.  _

_ “Yeah,” He says, soft and warm. “To Morrison.” _

_ He clears his throat and lifts his hands away from the dark screen of the control panel. Genji pads to the edge of the dais and steps off the platform, but lingers once he touches the floor. Waiting for orders and not sure what to do. Looking to Gabriel for permission to leave, but Gabe doesn’t give it to him. _

_ “You’re letting it get to you again,” He says instead. Genji blinks, but betrays nothing else. “Your body. I know that you think there’s something wrong with it, but there’s not. The neural responses are top grade and the reflexes are perfect. Ziegler’s told you that and she’s told me that. There’s nothing wrong with you.” _

_ That furious rage kindles in Genji’s eyes again, the same look he’d had for the holograms, and Gabriel’s sure that the kid would do anything to claw at him like he’d clawed them.  _

_ “This is not my body,” He spits. He lifts up his right arm, flexes the mechanical fingers and turns his arm one way, then the other. “This is beyond my control. It reacts without my telling it to.” _

_ “That’s not true. It just reacts faster. It knows what to do.” _

_ “I cannot feel!” _

_ “Yes you can. It’s just synthetic. It doesn’t feel exactly the same but you can still feel. You have the best technology in the world in you right now.” _

_ “How would you know?!” Genji explodes. He storms up to Gabriel, both hands tight and head jerked upwards. There’s a hiss in his voice, the telltale sound that a snake makes before it bites, the sound of a fuse running out. “How would you know? You do not know what I feel. You do not know what I have gone through! You still have your body- you are whole! You expect me to be grateful. I do whatever you tell me. I obey. I join your organization. I give information on my family. I betray my  _ family _ because you gave me a body that I despise more than I have ever despised before.”  _

_ Gabriel lets him rage. He watches the boy, leans back from his voice instead of looming over him. Once the volume has dropped and Genji is left heaving, steaming, Gabriel lifts his arms and lays his hands on Genji’s shoulders. Bare skin and metal.  _

_ “I will never demand you to be grateful to me,” His voice is stable and certain, but every inch as passionate as Genji was. He saw something like this in Jesse, the battle inside of him against his old life and the new, but this is far worse. “You didn’t want to die. You wanted to walk, so you took the offer. And they wanted you to be their weapon in return. I don’t agree with that decision. It was immoral and manipulative, but I wasn’t part of that decision or that offer. They just gave you to me.”  _

_ The skin of Genji’s face scrunches. He throws Gabriel’s hands off of him and takes a step back, snarling.  _

_ “You know nothing.” _

_ “I know that your clan wasn’t a family. They would’ve used you as a weapon too. They were going to use you like one, and when you wouldn’t behave they tried to kill you.” _

_ Genji recoils. He stumbles back, shock and hurt sweeping away his anger, and Gabriel regrets his choice of words immediately. He sighs, curses, and lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck.  _

_ “Look, kid, I didn’t mean that.” _

_ Genji turns away. His shoulders curl upward, shaking, and his arms wrap around his chest, holding himself.  _

_ “You’re right. I don’t know anything. I don’t have any idea what you’ve went through or what you’re feeling. I don’t have any augments myself, not like yours, but I know what it’s like to- to have your body change,” He swallows and drops his hand back to his side, lets out a sigh. Pity weighs heavily in his chest. “I just know what the doctors are telling me. I can’t be of much help. _

_ “Just stop thinking about it, _ lindo _. If you keep thinking about it you’ll never stop obsessing. But I promise there’s nothing wrong with you.” _

_ The boy turns slowly around with eyes on the floor, but he lifts them to Gabriel’s face. He’s molded his face to careful stillness, trying to cover up his distress, but there’s an expression on his face bleeding through. Gabriel can’t quite identify it, but it’s something harsh. Something fierce but guarded.  _

_ “You think I’m pretty?” _

_ Shock. It’s a nickname that Jesse had come up with and used to refer to Genji when it was just him and Gabriel.  _ Lindo.  _ It’d apparently slipped into Gabe’s vocabulary without his knowing. _

_ “I guess so,” He shrugs as he responds, noncommittal and far more concerned with the sorrow he’d caused a moment before. “Just a name. Doesn’t really mean anything I won’t call you it if it bothers you.” _

_ Genji gives him that same intense look and it’s still every bit as unreadable. Gabriel hums a note under his breath, frustrated with himself and his lack of filter. He has to take care of this kid, not trigger him. He goes to turn away, deciding that it’s about time he turned in for the night. _

_ “I’m not for sale.” _

_ He stops in his tracks.  _

_ He’s a kid. He’s just a kid. What the fuck. Why the hell is he saying something like that? _

_ But he’s not a kid. Not like Jesse was. He’s not some barely-18-year-old-delinquent that Overwatch scraped off the street and dumped into Gabriel’s hands. Not someone who needs a father figure. He’s in his mid-twenties. He’s been raised by a family that was ready to kill him after raising him for nearly 30 years. He has a father- had a father that ordered him dead.  _

_ Not for sale. God.  _

_ “What.”  _

_ It’s flat. It’s not a question. He knows exactly what it means. It’s a show of his shock, how absolutely floored he is. He can’t bring himself to turn around and see the look on Genji’s face.  _

_ “Just because you call me nice things doesn’t mean I’ll- I’m not going to-” _

_ “Stop.” _

_ Privileged rich boy with a pretty face that hung out with kids on the street. That’d make him a target to anyone that didn’t like the Shimada-gumi.  _

_ Both hands lift and drag over Gabriel’s face. What the hell has he gotten himself into.  _

_ “Kid, just. Just c’mon. I’ll bring you back to your room.” _

_ There’s no sound of footsteps. Genji stays at a distance.  _

_ “I’m not going to touch you. I’m just going to make sure you get to your room okay.” _

_ Another heartbeat of no response, and then the kid slowly sidles up to stand by his side. Gabriel lets his hands drop and slide them into the pockets of his sweater with a sigh. He sideyes the kid, sees the smothered trepidation and confusion covering it. He groans quietly, huffs, and starts towards the stairs. Genji pads after, a step or two behind. _

\---

The next time that Jack gasps the cameras are out, Gabriel doesn’t stop slamming him into the ground. He keeps heaving the soldier up and then cracking him back down against the floor and when he stops, he’s heaving, chuckling, almost giggling in the joy bringing harm to Jack brings him. He straightens up and steps off of Jack with a grunt, begins to pace in a slow circle around him, cracking his knuckles and rolling his neck. It takes Jack a moment to heave himself up. He rolls onto his stomach first, hacks a few times, and brings himself up to his knees. 

“You actually enjoy this,” He says it as a statement, not a question. Like he’s finally figuring out just how much Gabriel hates him. 

“You knew that before seeing my face,  _ oro _ .”

Jack flinches like he was struck, slaps a hand down on the floor and gnashes his teeth. “Don’t.”

Gabriel grunts. It was strange saying the name again anyway.  _ Chico de oro _ . Golden boy. He started calling Jack by that name while they were still in the S.E.P. and it caught on there, persisted throughout the Overwatch years. It’s been years since he’s said it. Feels wrong. As he comes up along Jack’s head, he swings a kick for it. Jack rears back, narrowly avoiding the blow, and shoots Gabriel a glare. 

“Cameras are  _ off _ , Gabe.”

“I heard you. Don’t know why you think that means anything to me.”

“Don’t act like you don’t want to talk. You stopped last time and you stopped again now.”

“I’m taking a breather. Getting ready to break your jaw.”

“Can’t we just talk?”

“Don’t have anything to talk about, Morrison,” He sighs out the words, feigning boredom with this game that Jack’s trying to play with him. He wants to see how much Jack will push to try and talk, how desperate he is. He’s still not convinced that anything Jack has to say isn’t a load of bullshit, but that feeling of longing has persisted.

“We have  _ plenty _ to talk about. Nothing you said last time made any sense. None of it added up and you know it. It doesn’t make sense to you either.”

Gabriel turns on heel to glower down at Jack. It’s true, but he won’t admit to that. There are holes. Contradictions. He doesn’t know what’s true and what’s false. But it’s safer to stand by what he already thinks than open the door for Jack to manipulate him. He snarls a warning note, but Jack doesn’t take the hint. 

“I could hear it in your voice. I know you better than you think.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know  _ everything _ about you.”

It’s a broad claim, but one that Jack is apparently sure of. There’s passion in his tone, a definite certainty that both startles Gabriel and shakes him. But he doesn’t give in. He stands firm, keeps the growl in his voice so he won’t give anything away.

“You might think so, but you didn’t see the truth when it was right under your nose this entire time. You didn’t know it was me. You didn’t even  _ suspect _ .”

Jack doesn’t have a response. He just swallows and sits up straighter. Gabriel curls his lip in a sneer that the other can’t see and starts to stalk toward him again. Jack collects his legs under him and pushes himself upwards to meet Gabriel on his feet. 

“It’s like I said before. You don’t have to put a show on for anybody. They aren’t watching. Aren’t listening.”

Gabriel doesn’t respond. He lifts his head to one of the cameras and curses Sombra for the millionth time. This is stupid. He should be tearing Jack to pieces, just like he should’ve reported him and reported Sombra without a moment’s hesitation. He’s been a reckless fool this far, letting the both of them get away with it and dragging Amélie into it. He’s been a goddamn idiot. 

But there’s that chance. That  _ sliver _ of a chance that anything Jack will say will make sense, will put to rest the clawing emotion in Gabe’s chest and soothe his memories back into feeling  _ right _ .

“Talk then.”

He’s always going to be a fucking idiot. No reason to stop now.

\---

_ He sees her when he’s walking with Reinhardt. The big guy’s taking him down into the weapon’s vault, talking his ear off the whole way about the new pieces of armor that Torbjörn’s just finished crafting for him. Gabe’s only half listening. The only complaint he’s heard so far is the polish being a bit halfhearted. Not that it matters anyway. The thing will get busted up in battle anyway.  _

_ It’s refreshing to be around Reinhardt. He always has something to talk about, and has this natural ability to bring up the mood, even if it’s the grim overcast of a funeral. He makes it easy to take Gabe’s mind off of the secret late night work he’s been doing.  _

_ And then he sees her.  _

_ Standing next to an elevator, waiting for the doors to open and permit her passage. She has a clipboard in her hands, tucked against her chest, and she has her platinum hair up in a ponytail. She’s only recently started to wear it like that. The sight of her triggers something in Gabriel. Lights a fire that boils something to life in his gut. Something dark, and poisonous, and angry. It’s an instantaneous reaction. One minute he’s listening to Reinhardt’s booming voice, and then everything is muffled background and all he can hear his a dull ringing and a far-away three time tempo. _

_ Every muscle in his body snaps and coils in tension. His hands curl inside of his sweater pocket and his jaw shuts so tightly that it starts a ringing in his ears. He can feel his face furrowing, feel the hatred bleed out onto his skin. There’s something inside of him twisting like a snake, yanking hard on his nerves and filling him the bone-deep urge to maim. He wants her dead. He wants her suffering. He wants her begging to be dead.  _

_ “Gabriel?” Reinhardt’s voice cuts through the rushing in his ears. Gabe snaps his head towards the sound and realizes that he stopped moving. Reinhardt looks back at him, head tilted and expression quizzical. Gabe’s mouth is dry.  _

_ “Uh,” He stutters, glancing back to where Dr. Ziegler stands at the elevator. She’s looking back at him. Her knuckles are white around her clipboard and her face is pale. She looks… Afraid. Afraid of him. _

_ “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming,” Gabriel manages, tearing his eyes away from her and stepping back up to Reinhardt’s side. The large man eyes him for another moment and then smiles and continues on.  _

_ “As I was saying! There’s been real advancements in the nature of what does and doesn’t constitute as…” Gabriel doesn’t listen past that. He’s trying hard to instead stay in one piece. He’s never had a reaction like that before. He’s never looked at someone and had such  _ hatred _ in him. His hands are shaking in his pocket. His insides feel like they’re on fire. There’s a sour taste in his mouth and he can feel his heartbeat in his tongue, slowing down from the rapid pace it’d churned to the moment he laid eyes on Ziegler.  _

_ He glances back over his shoulder to her, only to find her no longer there. The elevator doors are closing, and he catches a glimpse of her white lab coat before she’s gone. That reaction, that immediate knee-jerk impulse hadn’t been his own. It couldn’t be. He’s hardly spoken to the girl. He’s listened to her and read her reports, read about the things she’s done in the medical field, but he’s never been given a reason to… To want to kill her.  _

_ Her reaches up to flip his hood over his head and treads after Reinhardt.  _

\---

Gabriel’s wary this time.

The cameras haven’t gone out for three sessions. Ever since that absence in the first he’s been dreading being called in, being forbidden from seeing Jack again, having  _ something _ done to him to make him somehow forget the stirring emotions and the bubbling memories. 

But no order came, and he’s given nothing away. Hasn’t tried to contact Sombra again, hasn’t hesitated a moment in demanding answers from Jack when eyes are on them. Jack, who has actually given a few things up. The locations of a few agents, sites of now-abandoned Watchpoints that will have information buried in the cracks of them. He’s giving in.

Gabriel isn’t sure how he feels about that. 

He’s grinding Jack’s hand into the floor under his heel when the cameras go off, and he shocks himself with how quick he is to step away. How easily he gives Jack his space to breathe and recollect himself. There’s a smile on the soldier’s face when he drags himself to the nearest wall and props himself against it. Tired but satisfied and pleased. 

“Have at it, then. Ask me something.”

Gabriel comes slowly forward to kneel in front of Jack. They’d sorted out the deal last time they had a moment of respite; they take turns asking questions and are guaranteed answers. It puts them both on equal foot. Something that Gabe isn’t used to having with anyone.

“Amari. The way I remember, she died on a mission.”

Jack’s face shadows. His smile fades and is replaced with a closed, solemn look. He sighs and gives his crushed hand a shake, flexing his fingers. 

“That was the report. We were rescuing hostages, and we were under attack from a Talon sniper. She split off to give us cover, and the sniper…” He sighs and draws one leg up, resting a leg upon his knee. “They, ah, took her out. But she didn’t die.”

Gabriel cocks his head. He remembers the anger that had come with Ana’s death. The blame he’d put on Jack. It  _ had _ been Jack’s fault, leaving her there. Not even looking for her. It strikes him with a sort of irony now, how he’d believed the same about his own death. Believed Jack to be indifferent and uncaring.

“She kept underground. Didn’t want to get tied up in government or operations anymore. Once she had healed enough, she started up as a bounty hunter. Called herself the Shrike.”

A name that Gabriel’s heard of. Low-level concern on Talon’s watchlist. A pest but nothing big enough to draw major attention. Sounds like Ana’s way. 

“She, uh. She found me in Egypt. I was in a bad way and seeing her, I… I thought maybe I was dying. She’d been watching me for a while and decided she’d had enough of watching me slowly self-destruct.”

Self-destruct. Not something he thought Jack capable of. Proud golden boy always carrying his head high. Arrogant and crass and a stickler for rules. Privileged little white boy. 

There’s a click in his head, like a track cutting off abruptly, and Gabriel gives himself a shake. It’s not true. Popular and a stickler, maybe, but none of the rest. Jack struggled just as much as the rest of them did. He just hid it better than them. Never had a problem with putting on a smiling face for the cameras. Always had a way with people. 

The correction gives him a headache. He feels like he’s been struck with vertigo. The same uneven, rickety sensation as a child spinning around and around in circles coming to a sudden stop.

“It’s your turn,” He says, low and quiet. If they get on with it and move to another topic of discussion, he’ll have something else to think about. 

Jack doesn’t need time to think about his question. He answers immediately and Gabe knows that he’s been waiting to ask and put effort into stringing together the right collection of words. 

“How are you here? After the explosion in Züric, what happened? What’s the first thing you remember?”

Gabriel huffs out a breath. A version of a question commonly asked by Talon agents; ‘How’d you get like this?’. Normally can just shrug the inquiry off and not have to bring up the easily most painful experience of his life. But not with Jack. 

“I was resurrected.”

He says it plainly, like he’s not talking about what’s usually only commonplace a in science fiction film. Struggling to keep his tone flat so his fury won’t bleed through too quickly.

“I remember the explosion. Can’t remember anything that led up to it, how it happened, but I remember the  _ lack _ . Not being here. Being dead. And then I wasn’t.”

A tremble grips him, wracking through his body, and he’s dragged backwards into the sensation of being forced to breath again, brought back into a body- a body that was  _ his _ but has never stopped feeling alien since he woke back up. Everything had been so bright. So sharp. Overstimulated. And there was so much pain.

“It was Ziegler,” He pulls away from that memory and clings instead to his rage. The trigger-point reaction drowns away the invasive sensation of being brought back from the dead. He snarls her name, bares his teeth and curls his claws into the floor. “She was always dabbling in things like that. Always trying to push the limits of that kind of technology. Pulling someone back from the brink of death was too last century for her, she wanted to pull someone  _ from _ it.”

And, technically, she had succeeded, but Gabriel wouldn’t call himself a success. In a constant state of reanimation while simultaneously deteriorating. Half-dead and half-nearly dead. Living in constant agony and  _ wishing _ for death. 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Jack mutters the words quiet, like he’s hesitant to prod the angry animal in front of him. A growl wells up in Gabriel’s throat but he smothers it and smothers the imagery of Ziegler’s triumphant, glowing face and her twisted smile. “I agree that Angela was always pushing boundaries, always wanted the next best thing, the next milestone, but… Gabe, even if she’d brought you back, how did Talon get you?”

It’s like missing a step on a flight of stairs. Going forward with such certainty only to find the floor ripped out from under him and his stability careening downwards into what then seems like a yawning chasm. 

How  _ did _ he end up with Talon after that?

There’s no fill. No trail to connect the memory of being awoken by Ziegler to being the Reaper. The most obvious answer: she was part of Talon all along, but that can’t be it. He’d know. He would’ve seen her or at least heard her name in all the years he’s been working with them. Did he escape? Was he stolen? Traded away? How had he not thought about that before?

“ _ No lo sé. _ ”

\---

_ “You’re idiots. All of you. Fuckin’ blind, that’s what you all are.” _

_ Jesse’s mouth twists, forming into a frown, and Gabriel can see the worry in his brown eyes. They think he’s crazy. They think he’s gone off the deep end, but no, he’s the only one that sees. He’s the only one that can stop it.  _

_ “How can you not  _ see _ it? They’re everywhere! Every day more of them come in and they’ve got all of you fooled! How am I the only one that can see it?” _

_ “You’re not sleepin’ right, are you?” _

_ Gabriel’s head snaps up, eyes narrow and dangerous. Daring Jesse to go on and insinuate something he’ll regret. The boy holds his eyes for a moment and then breaks. He looks away, stares at the tiling of the floor instead, hooks a thumb into his belt. The dim lights press down on both of them, eerie, crimson and oppressive. _

_ “You want to finish that thought, boy?” _

_ “I’m just worried about you,” Jesse mumbles it like a confession, lifts his other hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. “We all are. You’re not actin’ right.” _

_ “‘Acting right’?” He repeats it in a low voice, calm and quiet like the tide drawing back. “ _ Acting right _? You want to talk to  _ me  _ about acting right?” _

_ His feet carry him around the table, away from the mess of papers that he’s collected. Newspapers he’s hoarded away, files he’s stolen, uncensored reports that he copied without authorization. Jesse backs away from him, two steps back before he holds himself, jaw set.  _

_ “There’s spies crawling all over this damn facility. There’s an infestation, Jesse, but you’re all welcoming them in like nothing’s wrong. Background checks are either too lenient or too stupid to know a forged document from a real one and half of our security is already compromised. Why do you think they’re always a step ahead of us in getting away? Why do you think they know exactly where to plant bombs? Even Jack’s not-” _

_ “Don’t drag me into what’s goin’ on with you an’ him.” _

_ “It’s not about me and him! This is about  _ everyone _ here! I’m trying to save lives and apparently I’m the only one that has the balls to get my hands dirty doing it.” _

_ “Why ain’t you brought this up with Reinhardt? Or Amari? She’s been askin’ me about you, tryin’ to see if I know anything about what the hell you’re so wound up about and I’m gettin’ tired of lyin’ to her.” _

_ “Then stop lying,” Gabriel snaps. “Tell her what I’m telling you. Maybe she’ll see the sense if  _ you _ tell it to her.” _

_ “And have her talk my ear off for listenin’ to your superstitious paranoia?” Jesse realizes his mistakes the second the words are out. He snaps his mouth shut and balks under Gabriel’s cold, angry gaze. He turns his head away, eyes to the floor again, and huffs once out his nose.  _

_ “Is that what you think this is?” _

_ Jesse doesn’t reply. After a moment, he shrugs his shoulders in a non-committal way, hesitant to deny but afraid of admitting Gabriel’s claims to be true.  _

_ “I’m trusting you, Jesse. You think I’d show this,” Gabe flings an arm towards the table. “To anyone? I’m putting my life in your hands. If they found out about this, if they knew that I know, they could kill me. They could kill you to keep me quiet. They could threaten Jack.” _

_ “Then why you want me to try to tell Amari about it?” _

_ “Because she’s one of the last handful of people in Overwatch that I trust.” _

_ Jesse slowly lifts his eyes up to Gabriel’s face. He sucks his lip in, chews on it, studies Gabriel while he tries to decide whether or not to chase the truth. Gabe hates the way this feels. This desperation. This mad scramble to keep his family close. He hates that they won’t listen. Amari’s smart. She can read people better than he can, but she doesn’t want to believe everything they’ve worked for is being poisoned from the inside out. She doesn’t want to join Gabriel’s side and fight Jack over it.  _

_ Gabe can see the indecision in Jesse’s face. The kid’s getting too old to be called a boy, too old to be treated like one, but Gabriel can’t squash the protective, fatherly urge in his chest. He’d die if something happened to Jesse. He’d fought with himself for days over whether or not he’d try to convince the kid, weighing the risks of letting him in against the danger of not. The loneliness had broken him. He’d tried again to just bring up the topic to Jack, and he’d been shut down with that stoney look and a passive aggressive comment about the nature his sleeping schedule and the importance of finishing reports. And he’d decided then that he had to tell Jesse. He had to get someone to listen to him.  _

_ He can’t be the only one in the whole of Overwatch carrying such a deadly bomb. He can’t be the only one to stand amid the rubble, wipe the blood off his brow, and say ‘I told you so’ when the it goes off. He’ll go insane if he has to stay quiet any longer.  _

_ “Alright,” Jesse concedes with another sigh. “Alright, I’ll… I’ll try to talk with her. Just, please try to get some sleep.” _

\---

There’s a routine of it now.

Go through the motions of beating Jack to a pulp until he coughs out some information. Wait for Sombra to turn out the lights. Talk. Repeat. 

Outside of the cell, Gabriel’s routine has not changed. He shares nothing with no one, except for Amélie when she asks. She doesn’t ask often, and never for details. Only on how he’s doing and how the deal with Morrison is working out. He offers her details, offers her the stories he’s been told and the fragmented, soap-bubble delicate memories that surface with each passing day, but she refuses. The less she knows, the better. 

To be fair, she has a point, but Gabriel still somehow manages to find guilt in not sharing everything with her. 

He’s beginning to feel like he’s dreaming even when he’s awake. Sleep is already almost a stranger to him, and dreams even moreso. He’s struck daily with sudden realization, recollections of the past. Fitting puzzle pieces into empty gaps, or having old false ones torn away.

While he’s aware that there’s something wrong with his memory and the way he’s processing it, he cannot reach the thought process that Talon has something to do with it. He cannot think the idea that Talon did something to him to alter his memory, cannot fathom the theory. It never fits in his head for more than a moment, and every time he works so hard to get to that conclusion it slips through his fingers. He might as well try to grab at wind. 

With more talk comes a softness. Jack is the first to ease into it, and by far the more eager for it. Gentleness in demeanor and phrasing with soft, lingering touches. Nothing more than a brushing of knuckles or a touch on the shoulder, but it’s still almost more than Gabriel can bear. The first few times he nearly bit off Jack’s hand just out of reflex. He still struggles with the urge, but he has himself under tighter control now. 

The resistance of being soft comes from him. He shys away from it. Being weak is something to fear, something to hate, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he hated himself any more than he already does. That, and he’s still somehow afraid that it will all end up being a trick. A long game. Some hallucination. A trick from Talon to test his loyalty. 

He’s scared of being weak. Being found out. Jack seems to pick up on that because he hasn’t pushed any boundaries. There have been no pet names, no talk about  _ them _ and what they used to be. Jack comes close to it. Sometimes so close that Gabriel can see him struggle with himself, force himself to turn away from the topic and ask an unrelated question. Gabe’s memories of Jack and their relationship are still muddled and wrapped with hatred and jealousy. He isn’t ready to try to peel back the curtain on them, not ready to risk himself getting attached to someone he’s going to have to eventually kill.

\---

_ Dead. Dead dead dead. She’s dead.  _

_ It sings like a song in his skull, looped on an endless repeat. He can’t get the thought out of his head. He can’t get the vision out of his head. She’s lying on the ground with both hands reaching towards the rifle she thought would save her, fingers crooked inwards in frozen eternity. Mouth gaping, eyes wide, graying hair splayed around her face like a waterfall.  _

_ And the blood. It’s oozing out from under her. Covering her. Gushing from the holes riddled through her middle, soaking into the ground around her.  _

_ Dead. Dead on the mission. Body missing. No burial. She deserves a burial. She deserves to be alive. What the fuck is going to happen to Fareeha? What the fuck is Jesse going to do? _

_ They couldn’t even go back for her body. Couldn’t track her down. Couldn’t get her assassins, couldn’t clean that city of the Talon agents. Couldn’t drag every last one of them to their knees and make them  _ pay _.  _

_ It’s Jack’s fault. Left her. Left  _ her _. Didn’t have the balls to go and drag her back to shuttle himself. Didn’t have the strength to protect his own family. Left her there dead. The mission was more important than his family. Appearance was more important than his family. He’d trade Gabriel in too, if it meant rescuing a handful of scientists. He’d trade the whole of Blackwatch in if it meant still being the golden boy.  _

_ No- don’t- it’s not Jack’s fault. He did his best. He can only do so much. He’s just as torn up about it, he could barely get the report out and he couldn’t meet Gabriel’s eyes. He had to get someone else to tell Reinhardt. Locked himself up in his office as soon as they’d leave him alone so he could have his own private breakdown.  _

_ It’s  _ Gabriel’s _ fault. It’s all his damn fault. He should’ve been there. Should’ve insisted on coming with. Shouldn’t been on the comms to insist she get to the shuttle instead of trying to out-snipe some Talon bastard. _

_ It’s his fault. He killed her. He put the gun to her head- he might as well have pulled the trigger himself. He’d tried to get her to listen. Convinced Jesse to talk with her. And she’d finally started to sway to him, started to listen instead of dismiss him and shoot him down and now she’s dead.  _

_ Dead lying in a street. Dead in a puddle of her own blood. Dead choking on it. Dead wishing to see her daughter again. Dead dead dead dead dead dead _

_ Smoke rises up off of his rigid, tense body. He’s shaking. Holding his breath. Clenching his hands into fists and struggling to let them go. Cupping his hands behind his neck as his feet carry him back and forth across the small, confined room. He’s suffocating. He can taste her blood in his mouth. He can hear her voice asking why he let her die. The song in his head screeches, jumps like an ancient scratched record, changes track. It’s his fault. His fault she died his fault Fareeha doesn’t have a mother his fault Reinhardt will break his fault Jesse’s losing a parent too his fault they’re being picked off one  _

_ by  _

_ one _

\---

“There was. There was a kid, wasn’t there?”

“You had a lot of kids, Gabe.”

Gabriel blinks uncomprehendingly. He had kids? The corner of Jack’s mouths pull up when he sees the clear confusion and he gives a soft smile.

“Not yours by blood. Not ours. Not adopted. But that’s what you called them. More often than not, the agents that were brought into Blackwatch were young criminals or runaways scraped off the street. Delinquents that signed themselves up looking for a better life. A roof over their head and three meals a day. You took them all in. Loved them. I’ve never seen you like how you are with them. You’ve always been loyal, always found family the most important thing, but even when comparing you to how you were with the original strike team, there was something special about those kids.”

Gabriel nods slowly. It makes a bit of sense. It doesn’t exactly slot into anything about his life with Talon- he’s never felt that sort of loyalty to anyone in their ranks except maybe Amélie. Definitely not to Sombra. Not Akande. He’s been protective of the agents sent with him on missions before, but it’s always been begrudgingly. Still, it makes sense. It feels  _ right _ . 

“Jesse was one of the first kids you took in.”

Jack keeps talking, but Gabriel doesn’t hear it. The name is a sledgehammer splitting apart a vault in his head that explodes outwards in a bright clash of images, smells, and sounds. Warm, sun kissed skin. A cocky little smirk and a cowboy hat. The clink of spurs tagging along after him wherever he want, like the tinkle of tags on a dog collar following its master. A hearty drawl and the spicy taste of cigarillo smoke.

Jesse. 

“Gabe?”

He snaps his head up. His vision is blurry and unfocused, head swarmed with images of the _vaquero_ \- _his_ _vaquero_. They took him from him. They made him forget _Jesse_. It shouldn’t have even been possible. 

“Gabe, are you okay?”

But they didn’t exactly take him entirely. There’d been the memory of betrayal. Someone leaving him behind. It’d been Jesse, slipping away in the middle of the night. 

“ _ Gabriel _ .” 

Jack’s hand touches him. Nudges knuckles against his forearm, tracing the path of his arm up to his shoulder. Gabe realizes with a jerk that he’s smoking. His fingers are half gone and he can taste blood in the back of his throat because of how raw his throat has been scraped by the smoke billowing out of him. His breath is ragged, haggard in his throat. Jack comes closer to him, sliding across the floor and lifting his other hand to cradle Gabriel’s face. 

“Gabe,  _ talk _ to me.”

He tries. He honestly tries. He tries to come up with the words, string them together into a cognitive sentence, tries to piece together anything that’s beating the inside of his head, but all he can manage is a pained groan. They took Jesse from him. Made him forget that scrappy little son of a gun but left the hurt of his absence.  

He leans into Jack, resting his head on his shoulder, and curls a clawed hand into the old soldier’s tattered jacket. Jack stiffens and doesn’t move for a moment, not knowing what to do at first. Then he sighs and slides both arms around Gabriel’s neck, nestling closer and holding him while he shakes.


	11. Chapter 11

Jack’s never been the praying type. Never been awfully religious and never given much thought to any omnipotent deity, but if there’s ever been a time in his life where he’s felt obligated to thank someone for his life, it’s now. 

It hadn’t taken long after his capture to give in to the idea of dying there in that room, dying to Talon’s puppeted hands. He would’ve rather died than give up his family. Still would. But now he’s set on living. Somehow getting out. Breaking out of that room, breaking out of wherever they were, and taking Gabriel with him. 

It’s a fool’s dream, he knows. Even with all he’s given them, every bit of information that Sombra has fed into his visor to relay to the Reaper, there’s still the chance that they’ll kill him when they’re done with him. And that has to be soon. He’s amped up the submissive reactions, the toneless, broken voice. He knows how to play the part. He’s seen it enough in the people rescued from the streets of warzones and soldiers that came home to a radiated wasteland where their family once lived. He saw it in Gabriel after Jesse disappeared. 

It can’t be long until they make a decision on what to do with him. Gabriel hasn’t given him any estimation of time for how long he’s been locked up- he keeps forgetting to ask every time he sees that face again- but he can estimate somewhere over two months. It might be more, it might be less. 

He can only imagine how worried Ana must be. How long would she look for him before giving up and moving on? Would she still even be in the Necropolis? He hopes not. Staying there after he’d been compromised would put her in danger of being found out. Talon hasn’t asked for her, of course. She’s been careful to stay under the radar. More careful than he’d been. 

He’s formulated half a plan in his head to find Ana once he gets back out. Make sure that he’s not being followed and get to Necropolis, see if she’s there or if she’s gone and left a message for him. Then it’ll be the three of them again. If they don’t kill him before he has the chance to get out. Before Sombra does something more than feeding him false information. 

Speak of the devil; his visor starts to fizz in his ear in the telltale announcement of Sombra reaching out to him. Jack tilts his head to itch his cheek against his shoulder and glances up to the cameras as he does. A tight feeling starts to settle down in his gut, anxiety starting to grip him. She wouldn’t be talking to him without Gabriel in the room. There’s no reason to turn the cameras off without him.

_ “Ay, gringo. Don’t go panicking on me, but they’re on their way to get you.” _

And there’s the reason. Jack’s eyes move to the door. He can feel the adrenaline starting to bleed into his veins. ‘To get you’. He licks his lips, feeling his mouth start to grow dry. 

_ “Don’t get away from me. Keep that shit down. They’re not going to kill you. Might rough you up a bit, but they won’t kill you.” _

Won’t kill him. He finds that very hard to believe. The hell else are they going to do to him? Why isn’t it Gabe coming?

_ “Just stay calm. I promise you, it’s all good. You’re not going to get hurt if you behave yourself.” _

Behave himself. Like he’s an animal. But, that’s all he is to them anyhow. He’s locked up in a cell being punished when he doesn’t obey and eating their food. He’s a glorified pet. And now he’s outlived his usefulness. 

_ “Do what they say and it’ll all be okay. You’ll see Gabriel again soon. Gonna be seeing him a lot more.” _

Gabriel’s okay. Alive and not hurt and not in trouble. Not being tortured by his imprisoners. 

Jack’s been giving a lot of thought to the nature of Gabriel’s relationship with Talon. With every session that they have the time to talk, every new piece of information Gabe reluctantly spits up more light is shed on the dubious events that led him to become the Reaper. Jack still refuses to believe that his life-long partner would turn on their family, and he’s starting to fit together the reasons behind the complete change of personality.

Gaslighting. Brainwashing. Torture. 

Are they about to do the same to him?

_ “Stay calm. Do what they say. I’ll check back in with you once it’s over. I’ll be watching” _

Sombra ceases on that promise and the static cuts out. Jack is left quivering where he sits, eyes trained on the door, and running through his head all of the terrible things that could be marching towards his holding cell.

They won’t hold back on him. They’ll want to break him. Gabriel never held back either- never wavered when there were eyes on them, never pulled any punches or kept himself from grinding Jack under his heel. But he always wanted something out of it. Always wanted information. He wanted to break Jack to the point of loosening his tongue, no farther. 

Sombra wasn’t lying to him. They come soon enough, and Jack has to pretend to be surprised when the door grinds open farther than it should, and multiple bodies come in instead of the Reaper. He stands but doesn’t take on an aggressive posture; he steps back and curls his shoulders, hands tense at his sides but not curled. Defensive and uncertain. There’s four of them, and each of them have pistols at their hip, but two cradle proper assault rifles in their arms. None of the weapons are trained at him, but they have them at the ready. Jack wets his lips and suppresses the urge to bare his teeth. 

They are without their helmets, and without their heavy grade armor. Simple black kevlar and dark camo pants. Faces exposed and minimal protection. They want to appear unconcerned of an attack, but still there are four of them instead of just two. Hell, even  _ one _ could overpower him as weak as he is now.

They eye him for a moment, and he eyes them back. One of them motions him towards- towards the door? It’s instinct to hide emotion from these people, but he forces himself to let his confusion bleed out onto his face. They’re taking him out? 

“C’mon,” The one grunts. Jack doesn’t move. “Come, Morrison, or we’ll drag you out.”

His pride stings him. Hot and searing in his chest. He can’t fight them. He can’t show determination now. He has to show his spirit is broken. He has to be obedient to demands that threaten him and  _ not _ ask what the hell they’re going to do to him. He’ll ignore his pride for this. Sombra told him to obey, and he will. 

Slowly, he takes a step toward the door. And then another. And then he’s trudging slowly towards ot, edging between two of the grunts and giving both of them a cautious look. He sees the hand lifting and tenses, nearly flinches away, but allows it to grasp his arm. The guard doesn’t shove him, as he would expect, only holds him still as the other pulls a set of cuffs from their belt. Heavy grade, like the first cuffs that he’d been fitted with. Amusement sparks in Jack’s chest and he has to force himself not to grin. Still a threat enough for them to cuff him.

Once the cuffs are secured on his wrists, he motioned forward again after the other two guards who turn and exit the room. They wait outside of the doorway for Jack to follow. He does, but cautiously. Even if his hands weren’t bound in front of him, he would’ve pulled them close out of anxiety; he’s never seen the outside of the cell. He hasn’t seen anything but those four walls in forever. 

The lights outside are just the same as the harsh ones in his cell. Fluorescent, reminiscent of a hospital with a concrete floor and blank walls. There are two guards outside of his cell, fully armoured and both wielding rifles. Has it been like that the entire time, guards standing wait just in case he somehow broke free? Are they the ones that shot Gabriel?

He doesn’t have the time to eye them for more than a moment. He’s shoved forward by one of the guards pushing on his shoulder, and his weakness shows in the way he stumbles and falls to his knees. Dehydration and minimal starvation has weighed heavy on his body. The floor jars him and his ears burn as the guards laugh at him, taunt his frailty. Jack heaves himself back up to his feet with a struggle, gritting his teeth. The walls swim around him, leaving him lightheaded. It doesn’t help they took away any ability to steady himself by binding his hands. 

“C’mon, 76. Get moving.”

He’s shoved again, but this time he manages to keep his footing. He casts a glare over his shoulder and he gets the barrel of a rifle in his back for his trouble. With a huff, Jack begins to trudge down the metallic hall, following the two that take the lead. The other two, the ones with the rifles trained on him, follow, and they leave the guards of his cell behind. 

They pass through a heavy door at the end of the hall, and then the environment shifts. It’s a stark contrast to the place he was kept; the lighting is low and red and the walls are darker in color. There’s small trails of yellow light low near the floor, and there are glowing blue holopads mounted on the walls. It’s more comfortable here, more fitting to Talon’s aesthetic. More fitting to Gabriel’s as well. He doesn’t have the chance to study any of the pads they pass or catch more than a few errant words before he’s hurried along. 

He tries to draw a map in his head of where they’re going, of what paths they take, but he’s lost almost immediately. He’s lost all sense of direction after the second turn. Everything looks the same. And every time he lingers a step, one of the guns at his back grinds into his spine, urging him forward. He sees no sign of Gabriel.

They bring him to an elevator before too long. Herding him between the sliding doors with the threat of their guns, but only with two of the grunts. One with a rifle, and one without. The other two stay outside the doors, and as they close they both give Jack a meaningful, threatening look. Then they’re gone, and he’s trapped in a confined space with two armed escorts. He loses his balance again when the elevator dips downwards and stumbles, falling against the wall with a grunt. His guards cast him a glance, one of them smiling, and watch as he struggles to right himself. 

The ride makes him feel nauseous, adding to the churning anxiety in his stomach. He can’t shake the sense of foreboding, can’t stop thinking about the things they could do to him now that they think him broken. Now that he’s weak enough to not put up more then a tussle. And he can’t stop thinking about Gabriel. 

Two floors underground. That’s how far down they go. It’s a short trip, but it still leaves Jack unsteady and queasy. He can see on the array of buttons that there are at least two more floors lower. How big is this damn place?

The elevator grinds to a halt, and the doors slide open into a spotlessly clean hallway. The lights are white again, but low and not nearly as irritating or migraine-inducing as the ones in Jack’s holding cell. Even so, the environment is enough to put him on edge immediately. It’s a medical wing. There’s no mere reminiscent feel and no mistaking it. They’ve brought him to a medical wing.

Instantly, Jack’s frozen in place. His muscles lock up and he’s stuck there, physically unable to move anything but his eyes. His eyes are free, and they dart wildly about, staring down the short hallway before him and touching upon each of the handful of doors and long windows. It’s one thing to be in a place that reminds him of the S.E.P. It’s one thing to be on edge just from the psychological trauma, but to be in a place exactly like where he was in the program- it’s too much.

For all the years that he was a part of Overwatch, Jack had had problems going into the medical wing- he and Gabriel both. Environments like that- like this- had become a trigger, and even the impatient nudge of a gun on his back can’t urge him forward.

He’s sure of it now; they’re going to experiment on him. Twist him into something unnatural and obedient, like whatever the  _ fuck _ they did to Gabe. He can’t let them. He won’t go through it again. 

“Move.”

He won’t.

“I swear to god I’ll brain you right here. I don’t care what the executives say, you’re not worth it if you’re already having trouble  _ moving _ .”

He can’t move. 

He hears the guard behind him scoff, and then he’s being shoved. It’s not like before, trying to get him to move, it’s meant to put him on the ground, and on the ground he goes. Stumbling forward and crashing onto the floor with a grunt. His shoulder takes most of the impact, sending jarring pain across his chest, but he barely has the time to gasp before there’s a heel kicking his ribs. Jack jerks, mouth gaping in a soundless cry of pain, and the impact vibrates through him. His legs kick, scrabbling at the floor and trying to get beneath him as his arms do the same, but there’s weight pressing on his side, keeping him down.

“Nu uh, you don’t get to get your ass in gear now and get off easy. Reaper’s been going soft on you since you started talking.” 

“Cavell…” The other guard begins, warning the one kick at Jack, but Cavell ignores them. His heel grinds deeper, creaking Jack’s ribs, and Jack gasps in pain. 

“Cavell,” They say the name again, firmer.  “We’re not supposed to hurt him. That’s the whole point of-”

“And he’s supposed to be the Reaper’s dog now. Can’t fuckin’ walk when he’s told, he deserves a real beating.”

There’s another kick, this one to the side of Jack’s head. He feels the impact before anything else; first from the boot and then from the floor colliding with his skull. And then the pain comes, throbbing in hot waves, and he groans pitifully into the tile. A ringing starts up, and he hears laughter beyond it. His visors flutters, breaking in and out of function. Just as the waves are starting to die down, he feels Cavell pull back for another kick, but the grunt stops before he can throw the next blow because a door opens. Jack doesn’t look up- he’s still reeling- but he hears it, and he hears the voice that follows. 

“I would appreciate it if you did not beat my patient right outside of my room.”

There’s a pause. A tense silence that Jack tries to breath through. He’s nauseous again; that kick is making his head swim and his flickering visor is only making the feeling worse.

“He was acting up, doc.”

“If he was not trying to escape, then I do not care what he was doing. I have a job to do, and you are both keeping me from it and giving me more work the more you kick at him like that.”

A doctor. Jack doesn’t often do well with those. At least the guard- Cavell- is leaving him alone. He struggles for a moment, wriggles his arms beneath his chest, and heaves himself upwards onto his knees with a groan. His visor is still flickering, but it steadies as he lifts his eyes to the new voice. He takes in a white lab coat and black pants, the pale orange turtleneck, the wired neck leading up to the chrome face. The doctor is an omnic.

Jack doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Maybe he’d always thought that Talon somehow fancied themselves above omnics- or at least, above them unless they were being used as servants. Obviously he’s been wrong. 

The face is smooth and placating like most omnics, with five dots on the crown of its head, glowing gently blue above horizontally slanted eyes. The omnic is tall but unimposing and carries no obvious weapon. It’s hands are metal, and it holds them bridged together in front of its body, but Jack can see that the palms and pads of the fingers are pale and synthetic like flesh. Neural upgrades, he suspects. They weren’t used for omnics in the past- there was no need for it most of the time- but he’d heard that some were trying to get them to be on par with humans. 

Cavell huffs behind Jack, but leaves him alone. The omnic’s attention shifts to Jack, who is still trying to collect himself while on his knees. It watches for a moment as Jack pants, watching it in return, and then lifts one of its hands to wave the two guards off. 

“Your presence is no longer necessary. I can handle Soldier: 76 by myself.”

Cavell hisses out a breath and mutters something, but it’s the other guard that speaks up, albeit in a much more respectful tone. 

“Are you sure, Epione? He’s dangerous. You know how much trouble he’s caused us.”

The omnic- Epione- lifts a hand to stop the guard’s small protest and nods its head. 

“Yes, I am sure. I am capable of defending myself if need be. You are both needed elsewhere besides.”

There’s a pause and then the scuffling of feet as both of the guards move away back towards the elevator. Jack stays on the ground, eyeing the omnic up and down. He can’t tell what pronoun to use for it. The voice is smooth and low-pitched but the name seems feminine. As far as he can remember ‘Epione’ isn’t a model of omnics, so it must be a name that this one chose for itself. 

“Well. Now that  _ that _ is out of the way, I would like to introduce myself,” The omnic tilts its head to Jack in a courteous gesture, the first politeness Jack’s been extended in months. “My name is Doctor Gideon Epione. I am one of the medics under Talon’s employment. I have been asked to perform a rudimentary check up on you and take care of any major ailments you may have suffered under your line of questioning. It would be best for both of us if you did not resist, so as to make this a timely affair.” 

Jack’s left at a loss from the omnic’s speech. The Reaper- Gabriel has only ever been derisive towards him. Condescending and insulting and hateful. And every Talon grunt that Jack ever had a run in with had been the same, but this omnic speaks to him with respect. Like an equal. He realizes he’s gaping, and he closes his mouth. 

“Come,” The omnic presses, extending one hand down to Jack. “I would prefer to see to you as soon as possible. I have heard a great deal about what you have been put through under the Reaper’s attention.”

Slowly, Jack takes the offering, clasping Epione’s hand and heaving himself up by it. The omnic holds onto him for another moment, making sure he’s steady, and then lets him go. It motions him into the door that it had come out and Jack, finding it easier to move with a strangely kind omnic as his only company, edges inside. 

The room, like the hallway outside, is spotlessly clean and white. In that, it reminds him of the medical rooms in the Overwatch Watchpoints. It’s wide, but not long. There’s two doors, one in the back and the other on the wall to his left. The one in the back is made of heavy iron and has a keypad beside it, but the other looks normal. In the center of a room lies a silver table with a blue surface, upon which an array of yellow pathways cross over in the vague shape of a human body, glowing faintly. There’s another table, this one lower and wider and covered in documents both paper and holographic. There are several monitors and a small variety of other machines that Jack doesn’t like the look of. 

The silver table is familiar to him as well. Overwatch had ones in its likeness in their medical wings, though not exactly the same. Talon’s probably gotten whatever newer models have come out in the past years. But he can guess the function must be more or less the same; to scan bodies and give out detailed accounts of injuries and illnesses to its monitor. He assumes that’s where he’ll be having this ‘checkup’, so he begins to step towards it but the omnic’s hand on his arm stops him.

“Not quite yet, Soldier: 76,” Epione hums. “You are to bathe before I see to your injuries.”

Bathe?

Jack furrows his brow and casts a puzzled glance over his shoulder. Omnics cannot physically emote or express, of course, but it feels as if Epione is smiling with the way it tilts its head at Jack. He really needs to ask its pronouns.

“This way.”

The omnic’s hand falls down to the small of Jack’s back, and guides him towards the door on the left. It slides open when they reach it, leading into a small bathing room. Tiled walls and ridged floors for gripping with bare feet, three shower heads in a row on the far wall and corresponding drains beneath them. There are shelves on a wall adjacent to the showers, high up and piled with towels and medical scrubs. 

“You can leave your clothes by the door. I would prefer it if you wore the scrubs for your checkup just for simplicity’s sake.”

They’re really going to let him shower. Just thinking about it starts to rile Jack up; he’s filthy. It’s been so long that he’s adapted to ignore the stench of sweat and the feeling of blood drying on his skin. But it all comes back to him now, in the face of the prospect of being clean.

Epione leaves him alone there. The omnic backs out of the room and once it’s gone, the doors close. Jack’s left standing there in his stupor, delight bubbling up in his chest despite his efforts to squash it. He can’t figure out how it’d be a trick- no one’s going to pop up through the floor and say, “Just kidding, you have to stay dirty”- but handouts can’t be good. 

He’s not bashful about undressing. His clothes are tatters anyway. His jacket is hanging on by threads, and there are far more tears in his pants than what would be fashionably approvable. Jack peels them both off after he toes off his boots, and then he sheds his socks and underwear. It’s his visor that he hesitates with, hands half lifted to his face, pausing in the air. Talon already knows about his partial blindness, but he can’t stand the helpless feeling he’s left with when his visor is off. And even past that, what if Sombra reaches out to him when he’s not wearing it?

His need to be clean wins out. The visor comes off, and he places it carefully on the pile of clothes he’s left by the door. It takes him longer than he’d care to admit to find the handles for the shower; the metal is hard to pick out among the vague, blurred white that makes up the rest of the room. He manages to find it, though, and almost gives himself a heart attack when he twists it and gets a facefull of cold water. 

The temperature jolts him, locks him once again into place, and for a moment he thinks he’s going into shock. But the water’s quick to warm and soon it’s hot and steaming, pouring against Jack’s shoulders and his chest. For a good few minutes, all he does it stand under the spray, grinning with delight and soaking up the warmth. 

It’s something of a euphoria. The sensation of water beating into his skin is almost alien in feeling, but becomes more like a dream that one gradually remembers more of. It’s so good. His head tilts up into the spray, mouth open in a grin, and he just basks. He lets his guard down for this and lets himself enjoy it

Epione doesn’t hurry him. Jack has to have been in there for at least ten minutes just soaking before he starts to actually clean himself, but there’s no omnic poking its head in to push him along. He’s left alone as he starts to scrub at his body with his nails, rubbing off layers of skin and scraping his hair clean of every piece of dried blood.

It’s a tedious process. It’s hard to clean a body that’s so battered and weak. If he stretches too far pain strikes through his muscles. It’s a little surreal to look over his body, to actively take in all the wounds he’s sustained under the Reaper’s hands. Gabriel’s hands. It’s like when he would get back from busting gang activity and had to sew himself up and then curl up in an ice bath. Ugly blotches of bruises splatter over his skin, discoloured purple and green and yellow. Most of the gashes from Gabriel’s claws have started to close- at least scabbing over- but they’re all still there and he still looks like a cat’s scratching post. 

To be clean again after being dirty for so long. Jack thanks his stars for that blessing and contemplates the existence of deities again. He’s scrubbed raw and pink by the time he’s finished, sensitive and strung-out on his nerves but he can’t remember something that made him happier. And towels. He’d forgotten what those felt like too. They’re rough on his tender skin but that doesn’t stop him from giving himself a thorough rub down once he’s carefully pulled one down from the shelves. 

The scrubs he’s less excited about. He’s never liked the open, defenseless feeling they give, nor the memories he associates them with. But he’s not eager to try and get back into what’s left of his old clothes- dirty and torn as they are. So he delicately pulls down a pair of scrubs, taking great care to not knock any others other, and pulls them on. The fabric is coarse and uncomfortable, itching him, but he doesn’t complain past a quiet sigh.

He’s slow in his approach to the door. It feels like too intense of a drop, going from being allowed to bathe to then having to go back into that medical room. And before that, expecting Gabriel to come, hoping for the chance to talk with him again, to be met with Talon grunts and taken from the only familiarity he has in this place. It’s making him nauseous the more he thinks about it; the changes going on around him and the sharp turns of his emotional state. He still doesn’t know what’s going to be done with him, or what’s being done to Gabriel. Can Epione lie? Some omnics are physically incapable of it. He can’t decide whether or not Talon would value that in one of their doctors. 

The door slides open once he’s next to it, but there has been no transformation to a horror movie type setting like Jack feared. The machines have not changed into torturous looking devices, and Epione has not been replaced with a mad scientist. The omnic, a blurred silhouette, stands at the low table of documents, pawing through blue holograms projected around him. It turns towards Jack as he steps warily into the room. The tile is cold under his feet. 

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

Again, Jack is caught off-guard by the politeness Epione provides. It’s almost friendly in tone, and it makes him uncomfortable and uncertain. He nods once, a little sharply, but Epione doesn’t seem to take offense. 

“Good. Now we can begin.”

It moves from behind its table of documents and comes forward to take one of Jack’s arms. It guides him forward to the scanning table and motions to it. 

“Climb on.”

Jack obeys, but a little awkwardly. His arms almost give out under his weight when he heaves himself up, and he grunts with the effort. Epione’s steadying hand lingers at his shoulder, making sure he doesn’t fall. His ears burn. How far he’s fallen from being a vigilante super soldier. 

Unsteady as he is, he manages. He lays down on the table and holds still as the omnic rearranges his limbs to align with the golden pathways, pulling legs slightly apart and his arms a few inches out from his body. 

“Please hold very still,” Dr. Epione hums down at Jack. “Sudden movement may interfere with the machine’s readings.”

Jack swallows as the omnic moves away, wondering if a racing heartbeat may cause some sort of alarm on the results. He hears the clicking of keys somewhere to his right, and then the surface beneath him hums to life. Golden light sprays up around him in a gentle mist and the table under him stirs to life, filling him with a mechanical warmth like that of his biotic grenades. Similar healing tech, if not the same. It’s helpful, but there’s always been something off putting about it, even when coming from a staff like Angela’s. Like it’s trying too hard to feel friendly, so it only ends up feeling forced.

He hears Epione moving again, behind him to the table of documents. Blue light joins the gold washing up under Jack’s body, rippling in waves beneath him back and forth like an old-fashioned scanner. There’s a whirring sound, a click, and two gray orbs float up, one at each side. They spin and whirl in the air for a moment before rushing over his head towards the table. Drones, he realizes. Detached from the machine to report the results to Epione.

Jack stays still on the table. The blue ripples fade under him, but the gold remains, coursing healing energy through his muscles. It soothes him just as much as the shower had, while reinvigorating his tired body. 

“Oh, my, my. This is interesting.”

Jack grunts and tilts his head upwards, trying to catch a glimpse of the omnic. 

“What is it?”

Footsteps pace slowly towards him and Epione comes up besides the table, bringing several holodocs with him. The drones hover after him, projecting the documents for him to scroll through. The vague shape of a humanoid structure is shown in one of them, outlined in blue. He assumes it to be is his spinal structure. 

“You have no broken bones.”

It’s unusual to hear emotion coming from a mechanized voice, out of a face that does not emote, but the surprise in Epione’s voice is plain. Jack squints at the documents, trying to focus his broken sight on the image.

“It should be impossible with what you have gone through. I do not understand.”

Ah. Of course. The unusual hardiness of his body that S.E.P. granted him, along with the enhanced healing factor. Epione slides the documents away and tilts his head down to Jack.

“May I perform an invasive inspection?”

Jack blinks at him. 

“I find it doubtful that your ribs are not broken. I would like to make sure that there is no damage that machine is not picking up on.”

Oh. Invasive like, with its hands. Fuck. Pronouns. 

“What do you- uhm,” The question bursts halfway out of him instead of a response, and then chokes when Jack snaps his jaws closed. Epione tilts its head. “Your, uh, your pronouns. Which do you use?”

There’s a moment of pause, and Jack worries that he’s somehow offended the omnic. Then Epione begins to make a sound. It’s mechanical and slightly distorted like its voice, so it takes Jack a moment to realize that Epione is  _ laughing _ . He hasn’t heard an omnic laugh before. Not like this. Genuine and empathic. One of Epione’s hand curls around its chest, and the other covers where its mouth  _ would _ be if it had one. 

“Such a curious man you are,” The omnic says once its collected itself. “I am glad you did not assume, though. Not many are so polite to ask, so thank you. I identify as male. I use the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him. Now, may I check your ribs?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.”

Dumbass. Time and a place, and it’s not when he’s about to have omnic hands poking at his chest. 

With another cybernetic chuckle, Epione reaches down for Jack’s waist. His hands stoop under the thin material of the scrub, ghost up Jack’s stomach, and gently touch at the base of his ribs. Jack jumps at the contact and then winces at the ache the sharp motion sends through his chest. He tries to hold still as the doctor examines him, pressing here and there along his ribcage, but he can’t help the way that he jumps when a particularly nasty spot is touched.

“I do not understand,” Epione murmurs as he pulls his hands away. “I have viewed several clips of the interrogations the Reaper has performed, I have heard the retellings from other agents, and I find it utterly unbelievable that he did not break a single bone in your body.”

“Lucky, I guess,” Jacks grunts out. Epione looks at him again, and Jack can feel the disbelief as easy as he could if Epione had an expression. 

“Yes. Lucky.”

Epione pulls back from where he’s leaning over Jack and turns again to the holodocs. 

“When did you begin to lose your vision? You do not have cataracts, so they could not be from age or genetics. Illness, mayhaps?”

Jack swallows. He doesn’t want to remember waking up in that burned out hellscape with only four of his primary senses functioning. The tang of ash permeates on his tongue. 

“No, it wasn’t illness. It was, um, after the accident. The explosion at Zürich.”

“Ah, yes. The explosion. Unfortunate, that. But it makes sense. Shockwaves can damage eyes like yours have been, and of course shrapnel can cause damage as well. But it does not appear that shrapnel was the cause of this, and you would not have been able to remove it without help.”

There’s no insinuation in Epione’s tone, nothing like he’s trying to wheedle information out of Jack. But the words still rub Jack wrong and he shifts uncomfortably on the table. 

“Since there is no lasting damage, I have no need to report anything. All of your injuries are simple. Bruises, lacerations, scrapes and the like. They will all heal on their own. There are no signs of infection, and I doubt any will set in since there hasn’t been any so far. I am sure you are familiar with the signs of infection given your background, so if you notice any you must come to me to have it seen to.”

So now they’re planning on taking care of his wounds. What  _ are _ they going to do with him?

Dr. Epione steps away from the table, leaving Jack alone for a moment as he goes to turn it off. The pathways under Jack begin to shutter off, and the drones glide back to nestle themselves into the sides of the table. 

“You may sit up now. I have finished.”

Jack does so, but painfully. With a groan he lurches upwards and peers around for Epione. The omnic is moving again, to his table of documents to slide the reports of Jack’s checkup together into one clumped stack, into one folder.

“It is unlikely that anyone will listen to me, given who you are, but I am going to advise that you be benched from any missions for at least two weeks to recover. Although you have not sustained intense damage, your body is malnourished and in this weakened state, I cannot recommend-”

“Wait.”

Epione stops and lifts his head from where he’s storing the files away into a pad. 

“What are you talking about? Missions?”

There’s another pause, another long heartbeat that Jack’s left floundering. Missions. Like. Like he’s an agent. Like he works for them. Oh, god. 

“Yes,” Epione says slowly. “I am sorry to confuse you. You have not been told yet. Your skills in the field and your military background would make you a skilled soldier. It has already made you one. And Talon’s executives would be fools to pass on the opportunity to add you to our ranks.”

Apprehension freezes cold in Jack’s veins. They  _ are  _ going to use him like one of their own. They  _ are  _ going to make him like Gabriel. And if he resists they’ll probably kill him. 

“As I was saying. I will recommend your rest and healing, but I cannot promise that you will get it. I have your assigned uniform down here to change into when you are ready.”

Uniform. Jack swallows. He’s going to be suited up like a Talon grunt. His disgust is bile in the back of his throat. Tanging his mouth and burning his throat. His eyes sting. 

“I am afraid that I cannot tell you more than this. I am sure you have questions, but I am not fully informed in what exactly you will be doing. But Reyes will be coming down soon, and he will be bringing someone with him to explain to you what is to be done.”

Gabriel. Thank god. A small comfort in the absolute shamble wrecking through Jack’s mind. He needs to catch a break. He needs a nap. Just some sort of standstill after this tumultuous day and turn of events.

“Not a very talkative man, are you?”

An awkward smile reflexively breaks Jack’s mouth and he lifts his shoulders in a shrug.

“Guess so. I’ve been doing more screaming than talking recently, and that ruins my throat.”

A poor attempt at dry humor that Epione does not respond to past a small hum. 

“Would you like to change before they arrive?”

Jack nods and slides slowly off of the table onto his unsteady legs. He watches Epione as the omnic crosses the room, moving past him to a small stand by the door. Jack hadn’t noticed it before in the dread of the environment that had swept him away, and can’t altogether make out the details of the dark bundle piled atop it. It’s the bundle that Epione gathers up and brings over to Jack. Carefully, Jack takes it and rans a hand over it, piecing together the articles of clothing through touch. What he finds surprises him. 

The standard kevlar cargo pants on the bottom he expects, but then he feels the leather folded atop it. The colors are all too dark to make out anything and the streaks of crimson red don’t give him any hint. Combat boots rest at the top of the stack, but so does sleek metal and glass that feels suspiciously like a mask. Reminiscent of his own in the faceplate and glass visor, but there’s too many harsh angles and grooves to be an exact replica. 

“It was ordered that you were to wear the typical uniform at first,” Epione explains, still standing at Jack’s side. “But Reyes asked that you keep your… Aesthetic. The visor was of course a must, considering your disability, but the rest of it was at his request.”

His aesthetic. Jack assumes that mean the kind of wear he had as a vigilante, the leather jacket and all. Maybe that’s supposed to be part of the humiliation of it. Not just being written off as another faceless soldier, but branding him different so everyone in Talon and out of it knows who he is. Knows what they dropped him to. 

Jack’s stomach twists. Gabriel still knows how to get to him.

“You may change in the other room if you would like the privacy. I will tell the Reaper that we are ready for him to explain.”

Jack pulls away from the table with a nod and moves toward the sliding door with his bundle. Epione stays behind but does not move as Jack makes his way again into the white tiled bathing room. He’s happy to get the scrubs off at least, but it’s strange to change into clothes that aren’t his own.

When he first started to make himself out as Soldier: 76, he had to steal. Clothes. Food. Water, sometimes. And rarely, money. He only took what he needed and he was heavy with the guilt of it. At least at first. It got easier after a bit, but that was worse. He comforted himself with the idea that he was making up for it in the grand scheme of things, by punishing criminals. He’d adapted. But putting on Talon’s clothes brings back that feeling. They’re not his. They weren’t made for him. They were made for a soldier that Talon could control. 

The pants and boots aren’t too bad. They’re simple enough. Run of the mill uniforms made in bulk for the military. The shirt isn’t terrible either. It’s not skin tight like the one Gabriel shredded, but Jack doesn’t mind. There are gloves as well, black with textured red pads and velcro wrists. But the jacket. It’s made in the likeness of his old one. Leather. Thick, stiff leather that’s new and unyielding. He knows it’s not comfortable because it’s not molded to his body. He knows that being picky about things that don’t matter, like the length of sleeves, is just him not wanting to wear the clothes that Talon gave him. But he still hates it. He hates what it symbolizes. 

The visor is last. It comes to life when Jack lifts it to his face, branching out and harnessing around the back of his head and neck. The mask fits snugly against his face and for a moment Jack’s visions is completely obscured with blackness, but then it boots to life. A red overlay flickers up into vague, pixelated amorphous shapes, but it focuses within seconds. The tinge is not as red or as intense as Jack’s old visor and as he glances around, a small rotating circle pops up in the right corner of his vision. A loading symbol, but nothing happens when it goes away. 

Jack turns in a circle and takes a sweep of the room. The read on the visor follows with no delay. He lifts a hand and swishes it in front of his face, then folds his fingers in to snap them twice. Again, there’s no delay and the sound comes in clear. It looks to be good tech. Reliability will only be revealed in time.

He’s sure that there’s all sorts of secrets hidden inside that visor, things it can do under the right circumstances and commands. Jack waits for a moment to see if any of them will spring to life, but none do. With a heavy exhale, he adjusts the sleeves of his new jacket and turns to pad through the door back into the medical room. 

Epione is not alone there. Jack barely has the time to take in the sight of a bulky, silver-haired and the dark shape beside her before the latter is lapsing into smoke and rushing for him. The Reaper doesn’t solidify completely once he’s reached Jack. He pulls  _ through _ Jack instead, sends him staggering, and coalesces behind him from the waist up. There’s that invasive feeling that’s becoming far too familiar as the wraith lapses through him and Jack seizes for a moment in shudders, gripping the front of his chest with a gasp. The smoke leaches through the creases and slits in his new visor, gets sucked in with the wheeze, but just as he starts to cough there’s a click and a soft hissing sound. The next inhale is cleaner. It still tastes bad, still smells like rot, but it doesn’t burn him anymore. Some sort of filtration system in his mask. 

His mind figures that out, but his body doesn’t catch on so quick. He continues to cough as the Reaper stalks in a tight circle around him, examining him from head to toe. Those claws prod at him, pry his arms away from his chest and slide down his spine. Jack recovers quick but he doesn’t fight back against being shunted from side to side. He lets Gabriel shove at him with minimal complaint, trying instead to peer past him to the woman. She’s watching Jack’s inspection with a look of amusement, both arms crossed over her armored chest. Epione stands beside her with hands buried in the pockets of his medical coat, also watching. 

Gabriel comes to a halt in front of Jack, obscuring his view again. The alabaster mask holds him and leers until Jack catches on and twists his face away in silent defeat. The only way they’ll make it through this is if they’re both convincing in their performances, and Gabriel has much more experience on that front. Behaving in the cell and behaving out of it is completely different for Jack. 

“This is satisfactory,” The wraith growls the words out, but they sound suspiciously more like a purr this time. The woman throws back her head and laughs. 

“Well don’t be shy about stroking your own ego! You’re the one that ordered this; don’t be so smug, Reyes.”

“Hmm.”

“Take a minute off preening your new pet so I can tell him the pecking order,” The woman says, grinning still. She beckons Jack forward with a wave of her hand and slowly Jack obeys, ambling forward. The Reaper follows him at his shoulder, oppressive as a storm cloud. 

“I bet you’re pretty damn confused about this whole deal, ain’t you?” The woman asks. “Everyone was instructed to keep you in the dark until I could tell it to you straight. 

“You refer to me as Dulski. I had a hand in making this decision, choosing what to do with you and organizing the fine details of the process, so that’s why I get to spring the news. You’ve been pretty helpful to us, I won’t lie. Lots of pieces falling together thanks to you, and the Reaper of course for loosening your tongue. You had some bumps in the road there for a bit, but it turned out good in the end. So instead of having him kill you,” She jerks her chin over Jack’s shoulder, to where Gabriel lingers an inch away. “We’re going to keep you. Train you up like a proper Talon agent. And that’ll be Reyes’ job to do. You’ll be staying with him from now on. You do whatever he tells you to do. Anything. He can still throw you around and no one will say a thing. He’s allowed to do whatever he wants.”

If Jack hadn’t ever figured out the identity of his tormentor, this would be around when he started having a panic attack. Even  _ knowing _ it’s Gabriel, his hands quiver just slightly.

“You won’t be taken on any missions for a while. You’ll be put through drills and training regiments, but privately and under Reyes’ supervision. If you have questions, you can ask him, and if his answers aren’t satisfactory, tough. Epione will be keeping tabs on you; he’s your doctor for now. Reyes treats you too rough, breaks a bone or two, then you come here for treatment. Get it, soldier?”

Jack’s reeling. He feels like he’s floating. The illusion of motion that one gets when returning to land after being on a boat for a long amount of time. He can feel Gabriel’s breath ghosting over his shoulder and tries to anchor himself into that sensation. He nods to Dulski and he watches her smirk. 

“Good. Then we’re done here. You’re free to go. Unless the doc has something to note?” Dulski trails off, casting a glance towards Epione. The omnic shakes his head and Dulski spreads her hands with another grin. “Well, there we go.”

The Reaper’s claws close around Jack’s arm and pulls, yanking him towards the door. Jack stumbles and tenses, but manages to force himself not to resist. He follows Gabriel out of the room, leaving Epione and Dulski behind. He doesn’t hear them follow, and he worries for a moment what Epione will be telling her, what sort of speculations the omnic will share. 

Into the elevator he’s ushered by Gabriel, and they do not wait for Dulski to join them. Gabriel shoves him in and then stalks in after him. There are no words between them until after the door closes, when Gabe turns towards Jack and advances. Reflexively, Jack presses himself flat against the wall behind him and closes his hands into fists, but there’s no sign of aggression from the wraith. 

Gabriel lifts both of his hands and slots Jack’s face between his claws, tapping metal to metal. He tilts Jack’s head from one side to the other, looking over his new visor in great detail. Jack shifts under the invasive touch, uncomfortable. His boots scuff against the seam of the wall and the floor. 

“Quit that,” He grunts. Gabriel huffs out a cloud of smoke, but stops. He lowers his hands and tilts his head, looking Jack over silently. 

With another huff, he steps away from Jack and recedes to the opposite wall. He reaches behind him to tap a claw against one of many elevator buttons. It lights up yellow and the elevator lurches upwards. Then there’s silence. That mask stays trained on Jack the entire ride up. Jack tries to hold the look, but like before he breaks and moves his gaze instead to the doors. Still he can feel Gabe’s eyes boring into him.

“Take a picture,” Jack grunts. “Or better yet, cut my head off. Being kept as a trophy piece would be better than being a fucking wardog again.”

Gabriel doesn’t reply. His silence angers Jack more than expected, draws the cords of Jack’s face in taunt and boils heat in the back of his throat. They’d talked once, about what to do if either of them were ever caught behind enemy lines- or had been kidnapped as ransom later during the Overwatch years. They’d been in complete agreement of what to do if that time ever came; they both knew it was their responsibility to pull the trigger if the other couldn’t. That talk was so long ago and Jack could hardly count on it to have any weight after Zürich, but the memory still boils up in his head like a blister about to burst.

“You having fun with this, Gabe? Keeping me alive, dressing me up? The hell’s the matter with you?”

Nothing, again. Jack growls and lifts his eyes, casts the Reaper a loathing look.

“If I’d known you were so desperate to keep punching bags around, I wouldn’t have let you have McCree.”

He was aiming to cut deep with that remark, that insinuation, and for a moment there’s a sick twist of pride when the Reaper twinges. But it’s swept away by guilt before Gabriel’s even on him.

Claws lock around Jack’s face, pulling him forward and then cracking the back of his head against the elevator wall. The blow leaves him gaping and teary eyed, pain flowing in waves across his scalp. But he deserves it for talking like that. Ana would’ve slapped him silly if she’d been there to hear it. 

Gabriel doesn’t say anything. Not a word of rebuke. Not even a threat. He just stays there, still holding Jack’s head against the wall, ready to crack his skull open if he says something else. But Jack knows better. Not enough to keep his mouth shut in the first place, but he knows when he’s crossed a line. He mutters an apology through clenched teeth, and Gabriel lets go of him. 

The elevator slows to a halt around them and Jack stumbles with it, still not entirely recovered from the blow to his head. Water and good food are still high on his list of needs, but he doubts that Gabriel is going to be providing for him. More likely he’ll just start to work Jack into the ground. 

The doors slide open with a hum and Gabriel turns away, stalking out into the hall.  Jack steps out after him and casts a glance around. Dark colors and low, red light just like before, but the surroundings are unfamiliar otherwise. The hallways are wider and the ceilings lower. The floor doesn’t glisten quite as brightly with reflected light as the one on the floor housing his prison cell. It’s not cleaned as often. The details are that small. How the hell does anyone get anywhere in this place? 

“Keep up,” the Reaper growls over his shoulder, already several feet away. Jack starts and hurries after the wraith, falling in place a step behind him. 

“I’m not going to give you a grand tour. You’ll be with me anytime you go anywhere, and if you’re not then your visor can give you a map. The only place you absolutely need to know how to get to at any moment is my quarters- our quarters. That room will be the only absolutely safe place for you to be in. Anywhere else, and there’s a chance of agents trying to kill you.”

Jack snorts a rueful chuckle, scanning the walls for any sign of out of the ordinary detail. Apparently that wasn’t a concern for people like Gabriel and Dulski, the fact that he probably wasn’t so popular with the footsoldiers considering he’d killed at least two dozen of them and made enormous amounts of trouble for them out on the streets. It’d be a hell of a disappointment to endure all of what the Reaper did to him, all of S.E.P. just to be shanked by a Talon agent after he got lost trying to get himself some damn water.

“You don’t go anywhere without me. Ever,” Gabriel continues, still speaking over his shoulder. “If you’re without me, then you’re trying to escape. And that means pain for you and trouble for me.”

Gabriel turns a corner and stops so sharply that Jack bumps into him. It’s like bumping into a pillar, which is pretty disconcerting since this pillar has been known to turn into smoke. Jack bites down his apology and peers around Gabriel’s side to see what the fuss was. And it’s just a handful of agents, Talon grunts coming down the hall towards them. 

Jack’s never seen Talon agents in clothing other than armor, or the classy formal wear their higher ups tend to dress up in. It’s strange seeing normal everyday clothes on these people. Only one of them is fully armored, sans the typical helmet, and the rest of them are a mismatched bundle of military kevlar and civilian clothes.

He doesn’t get why tension has snapped taunt across Gabriel’s shoulders until the agents see them- see him and he sees the expressions on their face. Bullies spotting their next victim. Up-town richies spotting a street dog, spotting a country boy.

“Ho-ly shit,” One of them says, mouth cracking into a grin. “I thought ya’ll were joking when you said you weren’t gonna kill him.”

“I thought they were at least gonna hand him over to us and let us have our fun with him,” Says another, eyeing Jack over and cracking their knuckles. “Payback for all the good men he took out. It’s the least he deserves.”

Jack’s been the target of this sort of thing before. He had to learn to deal with it in the S.E.P. Being the absolute living stereotype of a blue eyed country boy with a well off family got him a few unfriendly stares. It was unnerving then, and scary now seeing the gaggle of Talon agents come forward and eye him over. But it’s not any worse than being locked up in a stone room just waiting for his next assault. 

And, just like in the S.E.P., Gabriel’s not going to let him be torn apart like a piece of meat.

“Back off,” The Reaper warns in a low growl. It’s a small, subtle movement but Jack can see the way the wraith’s shoulders flex, rolling backwards in a protective tick.

“C’mon, Reyes. It’s not fair for you to call dibs on him. And you know that we won’t break him- you had him for months and he’s still walking!”

Something in Jack’s head twinges at that. Months. He’s been here for months. Ana must think he’s dead. So much time spent locked up under Gabe’s heel. And he’ll only be here longer, doing their dirty work. If he hadn’t found out that Gabriel was alive, this would be about the time he’d be contemplating offing himself just to get away and keep Amari safe.

The grunts don’t obey Gabe’s command. They stalk closer, eyes darting between the wraith and Jack, but they dont come closer than five feet. Any further and they’d be within range of those alabastor claws. Jack jumps as the screen of his visor shimmers, deciding now to be a good time to show off its features. Scans blink briefly over each face in front of him and with each scan information about the person types out on the right of Jack’s vision. 

_ Nolan, Antero. 37. Footsoldier.  _

_ Yeong-Suk, Kim. 29. Scout.  _

_ Dobroslav, Ezekiel. 38. Long-ranged sniper.  _

_ Ulrich, Landen. 31. Footsoldier. _

Jack can’t focus on anything else that pops up. His eyes are fixed on the last of those shimmering faces. Landen. The name and the face both are dreadfully familiar, because Jack has seen him before. Inside of Overwatch’s walls, wearing the uniform provided to Blackwatch agents. 

“I said  _ back off _ ,” Gabriel snarls this time and takes a step forward. Jack watches as the Talon grunts balk. Landen nearly trips over his own feet trying to put distance between himself and the Reaper. “You got complaints, take it up with the executives. But he’s mine until they say otherwise.”

How can Gabriel not recognize him? It’s a foolish question, and Jack shouldn’t be so goddamn shellshocked. They took Jesse away from him afterall, or at least the best pieces of him. Left him just being a filthy ingrate, in Gabe’s own words. Jack’s stomach twists and he realizes his hands are shaking. There’s a nasty twist of emotions knotting up his insides. Anger, revulsion, shame, betrayal. All wadded up into a mouthful of bile. He doesn’t know how people like Landen can live with themselves.

“Don’t get your panties all in a twist, Reyes, we’re just poking fun,” One of the agents, an older woman, says soothingly. “We all know the rules. No one’s going to move in on your territory. Keep him to yourself, no one’s going to complain past teasing you.”

The others mutter their agreement, but Gabriel doesn’t seem satisfied. His shoulders stay squared, and his head lowers like a dog about to attack. There’s a tense heartbeat, and then;

“Move on.”

The Talon grunts glance to one another, some of them scoff, and some of them give Jack a hungry once-over, but they obey. They move past them down the hall, still in their little cluster. Jack’s still in shock. He stares after them, trying to piece his head together. Gabriel was right. He’d known already, known that Gabriel was right after the explosion happened. But he hadn’t expected them to be so close. To be right at Gabriel’s shoulder. He was such a fucking idiot. 

Claws touch his side and Jack jumps, jerking away from the contact. But it’s only Gabriel, cautiously reaching out. He pulls his hand back at Jack’s reaction, curls it against his chest and hums a quiet grumble of a noise. 

“You alright?” He asks in a mutter.

No. He’s not alright. He’s reeling and starving and in shock from all that’s happening to him, all the terrible things that Gabriel was put through. He’s so far from okay, but he’s not going to unload all of that right in the middle of this fucking hallway. 

“Yeah,” Jack grunts. “Yeah, I’m okay. Those kids don’t scare me.”

The Reaper hums an acknowledgement and turns away, continuing down the hall. Jack doesn’t hesitate to trot after him, Sombra and her promise to reconnect forgotten. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been really excited to post this chapter for a while. I've had it sitting waiting to be posted for a while now, almost completely done except for the last few pages. I'm really pleased to introduce Epione; I never see many omnic characters in Overwatch stories besides the main cast and I really like how his personality unraveled in my head.


End file.
